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IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  {MT-3) 


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II  I.I 
11.25 


U    I L6 


Hiotographic 

Sciences 
Corpcration 


23  WEST  MAIN  STREET 

WEBSTER,  N.Y.  MS80 

(716)  872-4503 


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CIHM/ICMH 
Microfiche 


CIHM/ICIVIH 
Collection  de 
microfiches. 


Canadian  Institute  for  Historical  Microreproductions  /  Institut  Canadian  de  microreproductions  historiques 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes/Notes  techniques  et  bibliographiques 


The  Institute  has  attempted  to  obtain  the  best 
original  copy  available  for  filming.  Features  of  this 
copy  which  may  be  bibliographically  unique, 
which  may  alter  any  of  the  images  in  the 
reproduction,  or  which  may  significantly  change 
the  usual  method  of  filming,  are  checked  below. 


y.    Coloured  covers/ 
V  I    Couverture  de  couleur 


I      I    Covers  damaged/ 


D 
D 


D 


D 


Couverture  endommagde 

Covers  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Couverture  restaurdo  et/ou  pelliculde 

Cover  title  missing/ 

Le  titre  de  couverture  manque 

Coloured  maps/ 

Cartes  gdographiques  en  couleur 


□    Coloured  init  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)/ 
Encre  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 

I      I    Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations/ 


Planches  et/ou  illustrations  en  couleur 

Bound  with  other  material/ 
Relid  avec  d'autrtds  documents 

Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion 
along  interior  margin/ 

La  re  liure  serr6e  peut  causer  de  I'ombre  ou  de  la 
distortion  ie  long  de  la  marge  int6rieura 

Blank  leaves  added  during  restoration  may 
appear  within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these 
have  been  omitted  from  filming/ 
II  se  peut  que  certaines  pages  blanches  ajoutdes 
lors  d'une  restauration  apparaissent  dans  le  texte, 
mais,  lorsque  ceia  dtait  possible,  ces  pages  n'ont 
pas  6t6  fiim^es. 

Additional  comments:/ 
Commentaires  suppldmentaires; 


L'Institut  a  microfilm^  le  meilleur  exemplaire 
qu'il  lui  a  6t6  possible  de  se  procurer.  Leu  details 
de  cet  exemplaire  qui  sont  peut-dtre  uniques  du 
point  de  vue  bibliographique,  qui  peuvent  modifier 
une  image  reproduite,  ou  qui  peuvent  exiger  une 
modification  dans  la  m^thode  normale  de  filmage 
sont  indiquds  ci-dessous. 


D 
D 
0 
0 
D 


D 
D 

D 
D 


Coloured  pages/ 
Pages  de  couleur 

Pages  damaged/ 
Pages  endommag6es 

Pages  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Pages  restauries  et/ou  pellicultes 

Pages  discoloured,  stained  or  foxed/ 
Pages  d6color6es,  tachetdes  ou  piqudes 

Pages  detached/ 
Pages  ddtachdes 

Showthrough/ 
Transparence 

Quality  of  print  varies/ 
Quality  indgale  de  I'impression 

includes  supplementary  material/ 
Comprend  du  materiel  supplimentaire 

Only  edition  available/ 
Seule  Edition  disponibie 

Pages  wholly  or  partially  obscured  by  errata 
slips,  tissues,  etc.,  have  been  refilmad  to 
ensure  the  best  possible  image/ 
Les  pages  totalement  ou  partiellement 
obscurcies  par  un  feuillet  d'errata,  une  pelure, 
etc.,  ont  6t6  filmdes  d  nouveau  de  fapon  d 
obtenir  la  meilleure  image  possible. 


Th 
to 


Th 
po 
of 
fill 


Or 
be 
th( 
sio 
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firi 
sio 
or 


Th( 
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Tl^ 

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beg 
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This  item  is  filmed  at  the  reduction  ratio  checked  below/ 

Ce  document  est  fiimd  au  taux  de  reduction  indiqu6  ci-dessous 

10X                             14X                             18X                             22X 

26X 

30X 

y 

12X 

16X 

20X 

■' 

24X 

28X 

32X 

The  copy  filmed  here  has  been  reproduced  than'ts 
to  the  generosity  of: 

Library  of  the  Public 
Archives  of  Canada 

The  images  appearing  here  are  the  best  quality 
possible  considering  the  condition  and  legibility 
of  the  original  copy  and  in  keeping  with  the 
filming  contract  specifications. 


Original  copies  In  printed  paper  covers  are  filmed 
beginning  with  the  front  cover  and  ending  on 
the  last  page  with  a  printed  or  Illustrated  Impres- 
sion, or  the  back  cover  when  appropriate.  All 
other  original  copies  are  filmed  beginning  on  the 
first  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  Impres- 
sion, and  ending  on  the  last  page  with  a  printed 
or  illustrated  impression. 


The  last  recorded  frame  on  each  microfiche 
shall  contain  the  symbol  — ^  (meaning  "CON- 
TINUED"), or  the  symbol  V  (meaning  "END"), 
whichever  applies. 

Maps,  plates,  charts,  etc.,  may  be  filmed  at 
different  reduction  ratios.  Those  too  large  to  be 
entirely  Included  in  one  exposure  are  filmed 
beginning  in  the  upper  left  hand  corner,  left  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  frames  as 
required.  The  following  diagrams  illustrate  the 
method: 


L'exemplaire  film*  fut  reproduit  grAce  d  la 
gAn^rosltA  de: 

La  bibiiothdque  des  Archives 
publiques  du  Canada 

Les  Images  sulvantes  ont  6t6  reproduites  avec  le 
plus  grand  soin,  compte  tenu  de  la  condition  et 
de  la  nettet6  de  l'exemplaire  filmd,  et  en 
conformity  avec  les  conditions  du  contrat  de 
fllmage. 

Les  exemplalres  origlnaux  dont  la  couverture  en 
papier  est  Imprim6e  sont  film^s  en  commen^ant 
par  le  premier  plat  et  en  terminant  solt  par  la 
dernlAre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'Impression  ou  d'illustratlon.  soit  par  le  second 
plat,  selon  le  cas.  Tous  les  autres  exemplaires 
origlnaux  sont  fiimis  en  commengant  par  la 
premiere  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'Impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  terminant  par 
la  dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 

Un  des  symboles  suivants  apparaitra  sur  la 
dernidre  Image  de  cheque  microfiche,  selon  le 
cas:  le  symbols  — ^  signifie  "A  SUIVRE  ",  le 
symbols  V  signifie  "FIN  ". 

Les  cartes,  planches,  tableaux,  etc.,  peuvent  dtre 
filmds  d  des  taux  de  reduction  diff^rents. 
Lorsque  le  document  est  trop  grand  pour  dtre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  clichd,  11  est  film6  d  partir 
de  Tangle  sup^rieur  gauche,  de  gauche  d  droite, 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  le  nombre 
d'Images  n6cessaire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
lllustrent  la  mdthcde. 


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f  BOSTON  AND   CAMliKlUGE:  * 

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18  5  8. 


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DISCOURSE 


DELIVEIIED    BEFORE    THE 


FACULTY,  STUDENTS,  AND   ALUMNI 


ov 


DARTMOUTH    COLLEGE, 


ON 


THE  DAY  PRECEDING  COMMENCEMENT,  JULY  27,  1853, 


COMMEMORATIVE    OP 


DANIEL    WEBSTER. 


II 

t    ! 


BY 


RUFUS    CHOATE. 


PUBLISHED  BY  BEQUEST. 


BOSTON  AND   CAMBRIDGE: 
JAMES    MUNROE    AND    COMPANY. 

1853. 


1' 


(7j 


J 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1853,  by 

JAMES  MUNROE  AND  COMPANY, 

Li  the  Clerk's  Office  of  tlie  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Jlassachusctts. 


CAMBRIDGE: 

ALLEN   AKD    FAKNIIAM,  PKINTERS. 


DISCOURSE. 


It  would  be  a  strange  neglect  of  a  beautiful  and 
approved  custom  of  the  schools  of  learning,  and  of  one 
of  the  most  pious  and  appropriate  of  the  offices  of  liter- 
ature, if  the  college  in  which  the  intellectual  life  of 
Daniel  Webster  began,  and  to  which  his  name  imparts 
charm  and  illustration,  should  give  no  formal  expression 
to  her  grief  in  the  common  sorrow ;  if  she  should  not 
draw  near,  of  the  most  sad,  in  the  procession  of  the 
bereaved,  to  the  tomb  at  the  sea,  nor  find,  in  all  her 
classic  shades,  one  affectionate  and  grateful  leaf  to 
set  in  the  garland  with  which  they  have  bound  the 
brow  of  her  child,  the  mightiest  departed.  Others 
mourn  and  praise  him  by  his  more  distant  and  more 
general  titles  to  fame  and  remembrance  ;  his  supre- 
macy of  intellect,  his  statesman  "^1  sip  of  so  many  years, 
his  eloquence  of  reason  and  of  the  heart,  his  love 
of  country  incorruptible,  conscientious,  and  ruling  every 
hour  and  act ;  that  greatness  combined  of  genius, 
of  character,  of  manner,  of  place,  of  achievement,  which 
was  just  now  among  us,  and  is  not,  and  yet  lives  still 
and  evermore.  You  come,  his  cherishing  mother,  to 
own  a  closer  tie,  to  indulge  an  emotion  more  personal 


m  d 


and  more  fond,  —  grief  and  exultation  contending  for 
mastery,  as  in  the  bosom  of  the  desohited  parent,  whose 
tears  could  not  hinder  him  from  exclaiming, "  I  would 
not  exchange  my  dead  son  for  any  living  one  of  Chris- 
tendom." 

Many  places  in  our  American  world  have  spoken  his 
eulogy.  To  all  places  the  service  was  befitting,  for  "  his 
renown,  is  it  not  of  the  treasures  of  the  whole  country?" 
To  some  it  belonged,  with  a  strong  local  propriety,  to 
discharge  it.  In  the  halls  of  Congress,  where  the  majes- 
tic form  seems  ever  to  stand  and  the  deep  tones  to 
linger,  the  decorated  scene  of  his  larger  labors  and  most 
diftusive  glory  ;  in  the  courts  of  law,  to  whose  gladsome 
light  he  loved  to  return,  —  putting  on  again  the  robes  of 
that  profession  ancient  as  magistracy,  noble  as  virtue, 
necessary  as  justice,  —  in  which  he  found  the  beginning 
of  his  honors ;  in  Faneuil  Hall,  whose  air  breathes  and 
burns  of  him ;  in  the  commercial  cities,  to  whose  pur- 
suits his  diplomacy  secured  a  peaceful  sea ;  in  the  cities 
of  the  inland,  around  whom  his  capacious  public  affec- 
tions, and  wise  discernment,  aimed  ever  to  develop  the 
uncounted  resources  of  that  other,  and  that  larger,  and 
that  newer  America ;  in  the  pulpit,  whose  place  among 
the  higher  influences  which  exalt  a  state,  our  guide  in 
life,  our  consolation  in  death,  he  appreciated  profoundly, 
and  vindicated  by  weightiest  argument  and  testimony, 
of  whose  offices,  it  is  among  the  fittest,  to  mark  and 
point  the  moral  of  the  great  things  of  the  world,  the 
excellency  of  dignity,  and  the  excellency  of  power  pass- 
ing away  as  the  pride  of  the  wave,  —  passing  from  our 


eye  to  take  on  inimortulity ;  in  these  places,  and  Huch  as 
these,  there  .seemed  a  reason  beyond,  and  other,  tlian 
the  universal  calamity,  for  such  honors  of  the  grave. 
But  if  so,  how  fit  a  place  is  this  for  such  a  service  !  We 
are  among  the  scenes  where  the  youth  of  Webster 
awoke  first,  and  fully,  to  the  life  of  the  mind.  We  stand, 
as  it  were,  at  the  sources,  physical,  social,  moral,  intellec- 
tual, of  that  exceeding  greatness.  Some  now  here  saw 
that  youth ;  almost  it  was  yours,  Nilum  parvum  videre. 
Some,  one  of  his  instructors  certainly,  some  possibly  of 
his  class  mates,  or  nearest  college  friends,  some  of  the 
books  he  read,  some  of  the  apartments  in  which  he 
studied,  are  here.  We  can  almost  call  up  from  their 
habitation  in  the  past,  or  in  the  fancy,  the  whole  spiritual 
circle  which  environed  that  time  of  his  life ;  the  opinions 
he  had  embraced ;  the  theories  of  mind,  of  religion,  of 
morals,  of  philosophy,  to  which  he  had  surrendered  him- 
self j  the  canons  of  taste  and  criticism  which  he  had 
accepted;  the  great  authors  whom  he  loved  best;  the 
trophies  which  began  to  disturb  his  sleep ;  the  flicts  of 
history  which  he  had  learned,  believed,  and  begun  to 
interpret ;  the  shapes  of  hope  and  fear  in  which  imagi- 
nation began  to  bring  before  him  the  good  and  evil  of  the 
future.  Still  the  same  outward  world  is  around  you, 
and  above  you.  The  sweet  and  solemn  flow  of  the  river 
gleaming  through  intervale  here  and  there  ;  margins 
and  samples  of  the  same  old  woods,  but  thinned  and  re- 
tiring ;  the  same  range  of  green  hills  yonder,  tolerant 
of  culture  to  the  top,  but  shaded  then  by  primeval 

forests,  on  whose  crest  the  last  rays  of  sunset  lingered ; 

1* 


G 


tlic  summit  of  Ascutney ;  tlie  great  iioitlierii  light  that 
never  Hcts  ;  the  constclhitions  that  Avalk  around,  and 
^vatc'll  the  jjole  ;  the  same  nature,  imilecayed,  unchang- 
ing, is  here.  Ahnost,  the  idohitries  of  tlic  okl  paganism 
grow  intelhgilile.  "  M<i(/iiontmJhnHinum  capUa  vcncmmur^' 
exchaims  tSencca.  '^  Suhltd  ct  ex  ahnqito  vasll  amnis  cnqdlo 
ara.H  hahvl  /"  We  stand  at  the  fountain  of  a  stream;  wo 
stand  ratlrer  at  the  phice  where  a  stream,  sudden,  and 
from  hidden  springs,  hursts  to  light ;  and  whence  we 
can  follow  it  along  and  down,  as  we  might  our  own  Con- 
necticut, and  trace  its  resplendent  pathway  to  the  sea ; 
and  we  venerate,  and  would  almost  huild  altars  hero. 
If  I  may  adapt  the  lofty  language  of  one  of  the  admirers 
of  William  Pitt,  we  come  naturally  to  this  place,  as  if  we 
could  thus  recall  every  circumstance  of  splendid  prepara- 
tion which  contributed  to  fit  the  great  man  for  the  scene 
of  his  glory.  We  come,  as  if  better  here  than  elsewhere, 
"wo  could  watch,  fold  by  fold,  the  bracing  on  of  his 
Vulcanian  panoply,  and  observe  with  pleased  anxiety, 
the  leading  forth  of  that  chariot  which,  borne  on  irre- 
sistible wheels,  and  drawn  by  steeds  of  immortal  race,  is 
to  crush  the  necks  of  the  mighty,  and  sweep  away  the 
serried  strength  of  armies." 

And  therefore  it  were  fitter  that  I  should  ask  of  you, 
than  speak  to  you,  concerning  him.  Little  indeed  any- 
where can  be  added  now  to  that  wealth  of  eulogy  that 
has  been  heaped  uj)on  his  tomb.  Before  he  died  even, 
renowned  in  two  hemispheres,  in  ours  he  seemed  to  be 
known  with  a  universal  nearness  of  knowledge.  He 
walked  so  long  and  so  conspicuously  before  the  general 


7 


eye;  his  actions,  his  opinions,  on  all  things,  ^vhich  had 
been  largo  enough  to  agitato  the  jjublio  mind  fur  the 
last  thirty  years  and  more,  had  had  importance  and  con- 
sequences so  remarkable  —  anxiously  waited  for,  pas- 
sionately canvassed,  not  adopted  always  into  the  parti- 
cular measure,  or  deciding  the  particular  vote  of  gov- 
ernment or  the  country,  yet  sinking  deep  into  the  reason 
of  the  people  —  a  stream  of  inlluencc  whoso  ^fruits  it  is 
yet  too  soon  for  political  philosophy  to  appreciate  com- 
pletely; an  impression  of  his  extraordinary  intellectual 
endowments,  and  of  their  peculiar  superiority  in  that 
most  imposing  and  intelligible  of  all  forms  of  manifesta- 
tion, the  moving  of  others'  minds  by  speech  —  this  im- 
pression had  grown  so  universal  and  iixed,  and  it  had 
kindled  curiosity  to  hear  him  and  road  him,  so  wide 
and  so  largely  indulged ;  his  individuality  altogether 
was  so  absolute  and  so  pronounced,  the  force  of  will  no 
less  than  the  power  of  genius ;  the  exact  type  and  fash- 
ion of  his  mind,  not  less  than  its  general  magnitude, 
were  so  distinctly  shown  through  his  musical  and  trans- 
parent style  ;  the  exterior  of  the  man,  the  grand  mystery 
of  brow  and  eye,  the  deep  tones,  the  solemnity,  the  sover- 
eignty, as  of  those  who  would  build  states,  "  where  every 
power  and  every  grace  did  seem  to  set  its  seal,"  had  been 
made,  by  personal  observation,  by  description,  by  the 
exaggeration  even  of  those  who  had  felt  the  spell,  by 
art,  the  daguerreotype,  and  picture,  and  statue,  so  familiar 
to  the  American  eye,  graven  on  the  memory  like  the 
Washington  of  Stuart;  the  narrative  of  the  mere  incidents 
jjf  his  life  had  been  so  often  told  —  by  some  so  authenti- 


8 


cally,  and  with  such  skill  —  and  had  been  so  literally 
committed  to  heart,  that  when  he  died  there  seemed  to 
be  little  left  but  to  say  when  and  how  his  change  came ; 
with  what  dignity,  with  what  possession  of  himself,  with 
what  loving  thought  for  others,  with  what  gratitude  to 
God,  uttered  with  unfaltering  voice,  that  it  was  appoint- 
ed to  him  there  to  die ;  to  say  how  thus,  leaning  on  the 
rod  and  staff  of  the  promise,  he  took  his  way  into  the 
great  darkness  undismayed,  till  death  should  be  swal- 
lowed up  of  life ;  and  then  to  relate  how  they  laid  him 
in  that  simple  grave,  and  turning  and  pausing  and  join- 
ing their  voices  to  the  voices  of  the  sea,  bade  him  hail 
and  farewell. 

And  yet  I  hardly  know  what  there  is  in  public  biog- 
raphy, wdiat  there  is  in  literature,  to  be  compared,  in  its 
kind,  ^vith  the  variety  and  beauty  and  adequacy  of  the 
series  of  discourses  through  which  the  love  and  grief, 
and  deliberate  and  reasoning  admiration  of  America  for 
this  great  man,  have  been  uttered.  Little,  indeed,  there 
would  be  for  me  to  say,  if  I  were  capable  of  the  light 
ambition  of  proposing  to  omit  all  which  others  have  said 
on  this  theme  before,  —  little  to  add  if  I  sought  to  say 
any  thing  wholly  new. 

I  have  thought,  perhaps  the  place  where  I  was  to 
speak  suggested  the  topic,  that  before  we  approach 
the  ultimate  and  historical  greatness  of  Mr.  Webster,  in 
its  two  chief  departments,  and  attempt  to  appreciate  by 
what  qualities  of  genius  and  character,  and  what  suc- 
cession of  action  he  attained  it,  there  might  be  an 
interest  in  going  back  of  all  this,  so  to  say,  and  pausing 


9 


a  few  moments  upon  his  youth.  I  include  in  that 
designation  the  period  from  his  birth,  on  the  eighteenth 
day  of  January,  1782,  until  1805,  when,  twenty-three 
years  of  age,  he  declined  the  clerkship  of  his  father's 
court,  and  dedicated  himself  irrevocably  to  the  profes- 
sion '^f  the  law,  and  the  chances  of  a  summons  to  less 
or  more  of  public  life.  These  twenty-three  years  we 
shall  call  the  youth  of  Webster.  Its  incidents  are  few 
and  well  known,  and  need  not  long  detain  us. 

Until  May,  1796,  beyond  the  close  of  his  fourteenth 
year,  he  lived  at  home,  attending  the  schools  of  masters 
Chase  and  Tappan,  successively;  at  work  sometimes 
and  sometimes  at  play  like  any  boy ;  but  finding 
already,  as  few  beside  him  did,  the  stimulations  and  the 
food  of  intellectual  life  in  the  social  library ;  drinking 
in,  unawares,  from  the  moral  and  physical  aspects  about 
him,  the  lesson  and  the  power  of  contention  and  self- 
trust  ;  and  learning  how  much  grander  than  the  forest 
bending  to  the  long  storm;  or  the  silver  and  cherishing, 
Merrimack  swollen  to  inundation,  and  turning,  as  love 
become  madness,  to  ravage  the  subject  intervale;  or 
old  woods  sullenly  retiring  before  axe  and  fire  —  learn- 
ing to  feel  how  much  grander  than  these  was  the  com- 
ing in  of  civilizatioii  as  there  he  saw  it,  courage,  labor, 
patience,  plain  living,  heroical  acting,  high  thinking, 
beautiful  feeling,  the  fear  of  llod,  love  of  country,  and 
neighborhood,  and  family,  and  all  that  form  of  human 
life  of  which  his  father,  and  mother,  and  sisters,  and 
brother,  were  the  endeared  exemplification.  In  the 
arms  of  that  circle,  on  parent  knees,  or  later,  in  inter- 


\       H 


\'  n 


10 


vals  of  work  or  play,  the  future  American  Statesman 
acquired  the  idea  of  country,  and  became  conscious  of 
a  national  tie  and  a  national  life.  There  and  then, 
something,  glimpses,  a  little  of  the  romance,  the  sweet 
and  bitter  memories  of  a  soldier  and  borderer  of  the 
old  colonial  time  and  war,  opened  to  the  large  dark 
eyes  of  the  child ;  memories  of  French  and  Indians 
stealing  up  to  the  very  place  where  the  story  was 
telling ;  of  men  shot  down  at  the  plough,  within  sight 
of  the  old  log  house ;  of  the  massacre  at  Fort  William 
and  Mary ;  of  Stark,  of  Howe,  of  Wolfe  falling  in  the 
arms  of  victory  ;  and  then  of  the  next  age,  its  grander 
scenes  and  higher  names ;  of  the  father's  part  at  Ben- 
nington and  White  Plains;  of  Lafayette  and  Wash- 
ington ;  and  then  of  the  Constitution,  just  adopted,  and 
the  first  President,  just  inaugurated,  with  services  of 
public  thanksgiving  to  Almighty  God,  and  the  union 
just  sprung  into  life,  all  radiant  as  morning,  harbinger 
and  promise  of  a  brighter  day.  You  have  heard  how 
in  that  season  he  bought  and  first  read  the  Constitution 
on  the  cotton  handkerchief  A  small  cannon,  I  think  his 
biographers  say,  was  the  ominous  plaything  of  Napo- 
leon's childhood.  But  this  incident  reminds  us  rather 
of  the  youthful  Luther,  astonished  and  kindling  over 
the  first  Latin  Bible  he  ever  saw  —  or  the  still  younger 
Pascal,  permitted  to  look  into  the  Euclid,  to  whose 
sublimities  an  irresistible  nature  had  secretly  attracted 
him.  Long  before  his  fourteenth  year,  the  mother  first, 
and  then  the  father,  and  the  teachers  and  the  schools 
and  the  little  neighborhood,  had  discovered  an  extra- 


11 


ordinary  hope  in  the  boy ;  a  purpose,  a  dream,  not  yet 
confessed,  of  giving  him  an  education  began  to  be 
cliershed,  and  in  May,  1796,  at  the  age  of  a  little  more 
tiii  fourteen,  he  was  sent  to  Exeter.  I  have  myself 
heard  a  gentleman,  long  a  leader  of  the  Essex  bar,  and 
eminent  in  public  life,  now  no  more,  who  was  then  a 
pupil  at  the  school,  describe  his  large  frame,  superb  face, 
immature  manners,  and  rustic  dress,  surmounted  with  a 
student's  gown,  when  first  he  came ;  and  say,  too,  how 
soon  and  universally  his  capacity  was  owned.  Who 
does  not  wish  that  the  glorious  Buckminster  could  have 
foreseen  and  witnessed  the  whole  greatness,  but  cer- 
tainly the  renown  of  eloquence,  which  were  to  come 
to  the  young  stranger,  whom,  choking,  speechless,  the 
great  fountain  of  feelings  sealed  as  yet,  he  tried  in  vain 
to  encourage  to  declaim  before  the  unconscious,  bright 
tribes  of  the  school  ?  The  influences  of  Exeter  on  him 
were  excellent,  but  his  stay  was  brief  In  the  winter 
of  1796  he  was  at  home  again,  and  in  February,  1797, 
he  was  placed  under  the  private  tuition,  and  in  the 
family  of.  Rev.  Mr.  Wood,  of  Boscawen.  It  was  on  the 
way  with  his  father,  to  the  house  of  Mr.  Wood,  that  he 
first  heard  with  astonishment,  that  the  parental  love  and 
good  sense  had  resolved  on  the  sacrifice  of  giving  him 
an  education  at  college.  "  I  remember,"  he  writes, 
"  the  very  hill  we  were  ascending,  through  deep  snows, 
in  a  New  England  sleigh,  when  my  father  made  his 
purpose  known  to  me.  I  could  not  speak.  How  could 
he,  I  thought,  with  so  large  a  family,  and  in  such 
narrow  circumstances,  think   of  incurring  so  great  an 


Ih 


>i 


12 


expense  for  me  ?  A  warm  glow  ran  all  over  me,  and 
I  lay  my  head  on  my  father's  shoulder  and  wept." 
That  speechlessness,  that  glow,  those  tears  reveal  to 
us  what  his  memory  and  consciousness  could  hardly  do 
to  him,  that  already,  somewhere,  at  some  hour  of  day 
or  evening  or  night,  as  he  r  ad  some  page,  or  heard 
some  narrative,  or  saw  some  happier  schoolfellow  set 
off  from  Exeter  to  begin  his  college  life,  the  love  of 
intellectual  enjoyment,  the  ambition  of  intellectual 
supremacy  had  taken  hold  of  him ;  that,  when  or  how 
he  knew  not,  but  before  he  was  aware  of  it,  the  hope 
of  obtaining  a  liberal  education  and  leading  a  profes- 
sional life  had  come  to  be  his  last  thought  before  he 
slept ;  his  first  when  he  awoke ;  and  to  shape  his 
dreams.  Behold  in  them,  too,  his  whole  future.  That 
day,  that  hour,  that  very  moment,  from  the  deep  snows 
of  that  slow  hill  he  set  out  on  the  long  ascent  that 
bore  him  —  "  no  step  backward  "  —  to  the  high  places  of 
the  world  !  He  remained  under  the  tuition  of  Mr.  "Wood 
until  August,  1796,  and  then  entered  this  college,  where 
he  was,  at  the  end  of  the  full  term  of  four  years,  gradu- 
ated in  1801.  Of  that  college  life  you  can  tell  me 
more  than  I  can  tell  you.  It  is  the  universal  evidence 
that  it  was  distinguished  by  exemplary  demeanor,  by 
reverence  for  religion,  respect  for  instructors,  and  ob- 
servance of  law.  We  hear  from  all  sources,  too,  that 
it  was  distinguished  by  assiduous  and  various  studies. 
With  the  exception  of  one  or  two  branches,  for  which 
his  imperfect  preparation  had  failed  to  excite  a  taste, 
he  is  reported  to  have  addressed  himself  to  the  pre- 


13 


scribed  tasks,  and  to  have  availed  himself  of  the  whole 
body  of  means  of  liberal  culture  appointed  by  the 
government,  with  decorum  and  conscientiousness  and 
zeal.  We  hear  more  than  this.  The  whole  course  of 
traditions  concerning  his  college  life  is  full  to  prove  two 
facts.  The  first  is,  that  his  reading,  general  and  various 
far  beyond  the  requirements  of  the  faculty,  or  the 
average  capacity  of  that  stage  of  the  literary  life,  was 
not  solid  and  useful  merely,  which  is  vague  commenda- 
tion, but  it  was  such  as  predicted  and  educated  the 
future  statesman.  In  English  literature,  its  finer  parts, 
its  poetry  and  tasteful  reading,  I  mean,  he  had  read 
much  rather  than  many  things,  but  he  had  read  some- 
what. That  a  young  man  of  his  emotional  nature,  full 
of  eloquent  feeling,  the  germs  of  a  fine  taste,  the  ear 
for  the  music  of  words,  the  e}'*^  for  all  beauty  and  all 
sublimity  already  in  extraordinary  ni'^asure  his,  already 
practising  the  art  of  composition,  speech,  and  criticism, 
should  have  recreated  himself,  as  we  know  ho  did,  with 
Shakespeare,  and  Pope,  and  Addison ;  with  the  great 
romance  of  Defoe;  with  the  more  recent  biographies 
of  Johnson,  and  his  grand  imitations  of  Juvenal ;  with 
the  sweet  and  refined  simplicity  and  abstracted  observa- 
tion of  Goldsmith,  mingled  with  sketches  of  homefelt 
delight ;  with  the  elegy  of  Gray,  whose  solemn  touches 
soothed  the  thoughts  or  tested  the  consciousness  of  the 
last  hour;  with  the  vigorous  originality  of  the  then 
recent  Cowper,  whom  he  quoted  when  he  came  home, 
as  it  proved,  to  die  —  this  we  should  have  expected. 
But  I  have  heard,  and  believe,  that  it  was  to  another 

2 


14 

institution,  more  austere  and  characteristic,  that  his 
own  mind  was  irresistibly  and  instinctively  even  then 
attracted.  The  conduct  of  what  Locke  calls  the  human 
imderstanding ;  the  limits  of  human  knowledge ;  the 
means  of  coming  to  the  knowledge  of  the  different 
classes  of  truth ;  the  laws  of  thought ;  the  science  of 
proofs  which  is  logic ;  the  science  of  morals ;  the  facts 
of  history;  the  spirit  of  laws;  the  conduct  and  aims 
of  reasonings  in  politics  —  these  were  the  strong  meat 
that  announced  and  began  to  train  the  great  political 
thinker  and  reasoner  of  a  later  day. 

I  have  heard  that  he  might  oftener  be  found  in  some 
solitary  seat  or  walk,  with  a  volume  of  Gordon's  or 
Eamsay's  Revolution,  or  of  the  Federalist,  or  of  Hume's 
History  of  England,  or  of  his  Essays,  or  of  Grotius,  or 
Puffendorf,  or  Cicero,  or  Montesquieu,  or  Locke,  or  Burke, 
than  with  Virgil,  or  Shakespeare,  or  the  Spectator.  Of 
the  history  of  opinions,  in  the  department  of  philosophy, 
he  was  already  a  curious  student.  The  oration  he  deli- 
vered before  the  United  Fraternity,  when  he  was  gradu- 
ated, treated  that  topic  of  opinion,  under  some  aspects, 
as  I  recollect  from  once  reading  the  manuscript,  with 
copiousness,  judgment,  and  enthusiasm;  and  some  of  his 
ridicule  of  the  Berkleian  theory  of  the  non-existence  of 
matter,  I  well  remember,  anticipated  the  sarcasm  of  a 
later  day  on  a  currency  all  metallic,  and  on  nullification 
as  a  strictly  constitutional  remedy. 

The  other  fact,  as  well  established,  by  all  we  can  ga- 
ther of  his  life  in  College,  is,  that  the  faculty,  so  trans- 
cendent afterwards,  of  moving  the  minds  of  men  by 


15 


at  his 
I  tlicn 
luman 
e;  tlie 
fferent 
nee  of 
le  fticts 
d  aims 
o-  meat 
political 

in  some 
Ion's  or 
Ilmne's 
otius,  or 
r  Burke, 
tor.     Of 
losophy, 
lie  deli- 
ls  gradu- 
aspects, 
ipt,  with 
ne  of  his 
tence  of 
,sm  of  a 
ification 

can  ga- 
so  trans- 
men  by 


! 


speech,  was  already  developed  and  effective  in  a  remark- 
able degree.  Always  there  is  a  best  writer  and  speaker 
or  two  in  College ;  but  this  stereotyped  designation 
seems  wholly  inadequate  to  convey  the  impression  he 
made  in  his  time.  Many,  now  alive,  have  said  that  some 
of  his  performances,  having  regard  to  his  youth,  his  ob- 
jects, his  topics,  his  audience  —  one  on  the  celebration 
of  Independence,  one  a  eulogy  on  a  student  much  be- 
loved —  produced  an  instant  effect,  and  left  a  recollec- 
tion, to  which  nothing  else  could  be  compared ;  which 
could  be  felt  and  admitted  only,  not  explained;  but 
which  now  they  know  were  the  first  sweet  tones  of  in- 
explicable but  delightful  influence,  of  that  voice,  uncon- 
firmed as  yet,  and  unassured,  whose  more  consummate 
expression  charmed  and  suspended  the  soul  of  a  nation. 
To  read  these  essays  now  disappoints  you  somewhat. 
As  Quintillian  says  of  Hortensius,  Apparet  placuksc  illi- 
quid CO  dicente  quod  Icr/cntcs  non  invcnimus.  Some  spell 
there  was  in  the  spoken  word  which  the  reader  misses. 
To  find  the  secret  of  that  spell,  you  must  recall  the 
youth  of  Webster.  Beloved  fondly,  and  appreciated  by 
that  circle,  as  much  as  by  any  audience,  larger,  more 
exacting,  more  various,  and  more  fit,  which  afterwards 
he  found  anywhere ;  known  to  be  manly,  just,  pure,  gen- 
erous, affectionate ;  known  and  felt  by  his  strong  will, 
his  high  aims,  his  commanding  character,  his  uncommon 
and  difficult  studies ;  he  had  every  heart's  warmest  good 
wish  with  him  when  he  rose ;  and  then,  when  —  un- 
checked by  any  very  severe  theory  of  taste,  unoppressed 
by  any  dread  of  saying  something  incompatible  with  his 


\  \ 


I  I  'I 


ii 


16 


place  and  fiimc,  or  unequal  to  himself — he  just  un- 
locked the  deep  spring  of  that  eloquent  feeling,  which, 
in  connection  with  his  power  of  mere  intellect,  was  such 
a  stupendous  psychological  mystery,  and  gave  heart  and 
soul,  not  to  the  conduct  of  an  argument,  or  the  investi- 
gation and  display  of  a  truth  of  the  reason,  but  to  a 
fervid,  beautiful,  and  prolonged  emotion,  to  grief,  to 
eulogy,  to  the  patriotism  of  scholars  —  why  need  we 
doubt  or  wonder,  as  they  looked  on  that  presiding  brow, 
the  eye  large,  sad,  unworldly,  incapable  to  be  fathomed, 
the  lip  and  chin,  whose  firmness  as  of  chiselled,  perfect 
marble,  profoundest  sensibility  alone  caused  ever  to 
tremble,  why  wonder  at  the  traditions  of  the  charm 
which  they  owned ;  and  the  fame  which  they  even  then 
predicted  ? 

His  college  life  closed  in  1801.  For  the  statement 
that  he  had  thought  of  selecting  the  profession  of  the- 
ology, the  surviving  members  of  his  family,  his  son  and 
his  brother-in-law,  assure  me  that  there  is  no  foundation. 
Certainly,  he  began  at  once  the  study  of  the  law,  and 
interrupted  only  by  the  necessity  of  teaching  an  acade- 
my a  few  months,  with  which  he  united  the  recreation 
of  recording  deeds,  he  prosecuted  it  at  Salisbury  in  the 
office  of  Mr.  Thompson,  and  at  Boston  in  the  office  of 
Mr.  Gore,  until  March,  1805,  when,  resisting  the  sharp 
temptation  of  a  clerkship,  and  an  annual  salary  of  fifteen 
hundred  dollars,  he  was  admitted  to  the  bar. 

And  so  he  has  put  on  the  robe  of  manhood,  and  has 
come  to  do  the  work  of  life.  Of  his  youth  there  is  no 
need  to  say  more.    It  had  been  pure,  happy,  strenuous ; 


17 

in  many  things  privileged.  The  influence  of  home,  of 
his  father,  and  the  excellent  mother,  and  that  noble 
brother,  whom  he  loved  so  dearly,  and  mourned  with 
such  sorrow  —  these  influences  on  his  heart,  principles, 
will,  aims,  were  elevated  and  strong.  At  an  early  age, 
comparatively,  the  then  great  distinction  of  liberal  edu- 
cation was  his.  His  college  life  was  brilliant  and  without 
a  stain ;  and  in  moving  his  admission  to  the  bar,  Mr.  Gore 
presented  him  as  one  of  extraordinary  promise. 

With  prospects  bright,  upon  the  world  he  came  — 
Pure  love  of  virtue,  strong  desire  of  fame ; 
^len  watched  the  way  his  lofty  mind  would  take, 
And  all  foretold  the  progress  he  would  make. 


And  yet,  if  on  some  day  as  that  season  was  drawing  to 
its  close,  it  had  been  foretold  to  him,  that  before  his  life 
—  prolonged  to  little  more  than  threescore  ^^ears  and 
ten  —  should  end,  he  should  see  that  country,  in  which 
he  was  coming  to  act  his  part,  expanded  across  a  conti- 
nent ;  the  thirteen  states  of  1801  multiplied  to  thirty- 
one  ;  the  territory  of  the  Northwest  and  the  great  valley 
below  sown  full  of  those  stars  of  empire  ;  the  Mississippi 
forded,  and  the  Sabine,  and  Rio  Grande,  and  the  Nueces ; 
the  ponderous  gates  of  the  Eocky  Mountains  opened  to 
shut  no  more  ;  the  great  tranquil  sea  become  our  sea ; 
her  area  seven  times  larger,  her  people  five  times  more 
in  number ;  that  through  all  experiences  of  trial,  the 
madness  of  party,  the  injustice  of  foreign  powers,  the 
vast  enlargement  of  her  borders,  the  antagonisms  of 

interior  interest  and  feeling  —  the  spirit  of  nationality 

2* 


'IJ 


'M 


18 


■would  grow  stronger  still  and  more  plastic ;  that  the 
tide  of  American  feeling  would  run  ever  fuller ;  that 
her  agriculture  would  grow  more  .scientific;  her  arts 
more  various  and  instructed,  and  better  rewarded ; 
her  commerce  winged  to  a  wider  and  still  wider  lliglit ; 
that  the  part  she  would  play  in  human  aflliirs  would 
grow  nobler  ever,  and  more  recognized  ;  that  in  this 
vast  growth  of  national  greatness  time  would  be  found 
for  the  higher  necessities  of  the  soul ;  that  her  popular 
and  her  higher  education  would  go  on  advancing ;  that 
her  charities  and  all  her  enterprises  of  philanthropy 
would  go  on  enlarging ;  that  her  age  of  lettered  glory 
should  find  its  auspicious  dawn  —  and  then  it  had  been  also 
foretold  him  that  even  so,  with  her  growth  and  strength, 
should  his  fame  grow  and  be  established  and  cherished, 
there  where  she  should  garner  up  her  heart ;  that  by 
long  gradations  of  service  and  labor  he  should  rise  to 
be,  before  he  should  taste  of  death,  of  the  peerless 
among  her  great  ones ;  that  he  should  win  the  double 
honor,  and  wear  the  double  wreath  of  professional  and 
public  supremacy  ;  that  he  should  become  her  wisest  to 
counsel  and  her  most  eloquent  to  persuade ;  that  he 
should  come  to  be  called  the  Defender  of  the  Constitu- 
tion and  the  preserver  of  honorable  peace ;  that  the 
"  austere  glory  of  suffering "  to  save  the  Union  should 
be  his ;  that  his  death,  at  the  summit  of  greatness,  on 
the  verge  of  a  ripe  and  venerable  age,  should  be  distin- 
guished, less  by  the  flags  at  half-mast  on  ocean  and  lake, 
less  by  the  minute-gun,  less  by  the  public  procession, 
and  the  appointed  eulogy,  than  by  sudden  paleness  over- 
spreading all  faces,  by  gushing  tears,  by  sorrow,  thought- 


10 


ful,  boding,  silent,  the  sense  of  dcsoltitcncss,  as  if  renown 
and  grace  were  dead  —  as  if  the  hunter's  path,  and  the 
sailor's  in  the  great  soHtude  of  wilderness  or  sea,  hence- 
forward were  more  lonely  and  less  safe  than  before  — 
had  this  prediction  been  whispered,  how  cahnly  had 
that  perfect  soln'iety  of  iriind  put  it  all  aside  as  a  per- 
nicious or  idle  dream !  Yet,  in  the  fulfilment  of  that 
prediction  is  told  the  remaining  story  of  his  life. 

It  docs  not  come  within  the  plan  which  I  have 
marked  out  for  this  discourse  to  repeat  the  incidents  of 
that  subsequent  history.  The  more  conspicuous  are 
known  to  you  and  the  whole  American  world.  iVIinuter 
details  the  time  does  not  permit,  nor  the  occasion  re- 
quire. Some  quite  general  views  of  what  he  became 
and  achieved  ;  some  attempt  to  appreciate  that  intellec- 
tual power,  and  force  of  will,  and  elaborate  culture,  and 
that  power  of  eloquence,  so  splendid  and  remarkable, 
by  which  he  wrought  his  work  ;  some  tribute  to  the  en- 
dearing and  noble  parts  of  his  character  ;  and  some 
attempt  to  vmdicate  the  political  morality  by  which  his 
public  life  was  guided,  even  to  its  last  great  act,  are  all 
that  I  propose,  and  much  more  than  I  can  hope  worthily 
to  accomplish. 

In  coming,  then,  to  consider  what  he  became  and 
achieved,  I  have  always  thought  it  was  not  easy  to  lay 
too  much  stress,  in  the  first  place,  on  that  realization  of 
what  might  have  been  regarded  incompatible  forms  of 
superiority,  and  that  exemplification  of  what  might  have 
been  regarded  incompatible  gifts  or  acquirements  — 
"  rare  in  their  separate  excellence,  wonderful  in  their 


20 


special  coml)inati()n  "  —  wlii(*li  meet  us  in  hlni  every- 
"Nvliere.  Kenuirkj  first,  that  einlnenco,  rare,  if  not  iinprc- 
ccdentetl,  of  tlic  first  rate,  in  the  two  substantially  dis- 
tinct and  inikindred  professions  —  that  of  the  law,  and 
that  of  public  life.  In  surveying  that  ultimate  and 
finished  greatness  in  which  ho  stands  licforc  you  in  his 
full  stature  and  at  his  best,  this  doul)le  and  blended 
eminence  is  the  first  thing  that  fixes  the  eye,  and  the 
last.  When  he  died  he  was  first  of  American  lawyers, 
and  first  of  American  statesmen.  In  both  characters  he 
continued  —  discharging  the  foremost  part  in  each, 
down  to  the  falling  of  the  awful  curtain.  Both  char- 
acters he  kept  distinct  —  the  habits  of  mind,  the  forms 
of  reasoning,  the  nature  of  the  proofs,  the  style  of  elo- 
quence. Neither  hurt  nor  changed  the  other.  How 
much  his  understanding  was  "quickened  and  invigo- 
rated" by  the  law,  I  have  often  heard  him  acknowledge 
and  explain.  But  how,  in  spite  of  the  law,  was  that 
mind,  by  other  felicit}-,  and  other  culture,  "  opened  and 
liberalized  "  also  !  How  few  of  what  are  called  the  bad 
intellectual  habits  of  the  bar  he  carried  into  the  duties 
of  statesmanship !  His  interpretations  of  the  consti- 
tution and  of  treaties ;  his  expositions  of  public  law  — 
how  little  do  you  find  in  them,  where,  if  anywhere, 
you  would  expect  it,  of  the  mere  ingenuity,  the  moving 
of  "  vermiculate  questions,"  the  word-catching,  the  schol- 
astic subtlety  which,  in  the  phrase  of  his  memorable 
quotation, 

"  Can  sever  and  divide 
A  hair  'twixt  north  and  north-west  side,"  — 


21 


ascribed  hy  .satire  to  the  profession ;  and  how  mncli  o^ 
its  truer  function,  and  nobler  power  of  callinj^,  liistory, 
languaj^e,  the  moral  sentiments,  reason,  eoninion  sense, 
the  high  spii  it  of  niagnauiinous  nati(mality,  to  the  search 
of  truth!  How  little  do  we  find  in  his  polities  of  an- 
other bad  habit  of  the  profession,  the  worst  "idol  of  the 
cnvo,"  a  ni(  rl)id,  uniensoning,  and  regretful  passion  for 
the  past,  that  bends  and  weepM  over  the  stream,  running 
irreversibly,  because  it  will  not  return,  and  will  not 
pause,  and  gives  back  to  vanity  every  hour  a  changed 
and  less  beautiful  face !  We  ascribe  to  him  certainly  a 
sober  and  conservative  habit  of  mind,  and  such  he  had. 
Such  a  habit  the  study  and  practice  of  the  law  doubtless 
docs  not  impair.  But  his  was  my  Lord  Bacon's  conser- 
vatism. He  held  with  him,  "  that  anti(|uity  deserveth 
this  reverence,  that  men  should  make  a  stand  thereupon, 
and  discover  what  is  the  best  way ;  but  when  the  disco- 
very is  well  taken,  then  to  make  progression."  Ho 
would  keep  the  Union  according  to  the  Constitution, 
not  as  a  relic,  a  memorial,  a  tradition  —  not  for  what  it 
has  done,  though  that  kindled  his  gratitude  and  excited 
his  admiration  —  but  for  what  it  is  now  and  hereafter 
to  do,  when  adapted  by  a  wise  practical  philosophy  to 
a  wider  and  higher  area,  to  larger  numbers,  to  severer 
and  more  glorious  probation.  Who  better  than  he  has 
grasped  and  displayed  the  advancing  tendencies  and 
enlarging  duties  of  America  ?  Who  has  caught  —  whose 
eloquence,  whose  genius,  whose  counsels,  have  caught 
more  adequately  the  genuine  inspiration  of  our  destiny  ? 
Who  has  better  expounded  by  what  moral  and  pruden- 


i^ 


22 


tial  policy,  by  what  improved  culture  of  heart  and  rea- 
son, by  what  true  worship  of  God,  by  what  good  faith 
to  all  other  nations,  the  dangers  of  that  destiny  may  be 
disarmed,  and  its  large  promise  laid  hold  on  ? 

And  while  the  lawyer  did  not  hurt  the  statesman,  the 
statesman  did  not  hurt  the  lawyer.  More ;  the  states- 
man did  not  modify,  did  not  unroljc,  did  not  tinge,  the 
lawyer.  It  would  not  be  to  him  that  the  epigram  could 
have  application,  where  the  old  Latin  satirist  makes  the 
client  complain  that  his  lawsuit  is  concerning  trcs  capelke 
—  three  kids ;  and  that  his  advocate  with  large  disdain  of 
them,  is  haranguing  with  loud  voice  and  both  hands, 
about  the  slaughters  of  Cannoo,  the  war  of  Mithridates, 
the  perjuries  of  Hannibal.  I  could  never  detect  that  in 
his  discussions  of  law  he  did  not  just  as  much  recognize 
authority,  just  as  anxiously  seek  for  adjudications  old 
and  new  in  his  favor,  just  as  closely  sift  them  and  col- 
late them,  that  he  might  bring  them  to  his  side  if  he 
could,  or  leave  them  ambiguous  and  harmless  if  he  could 
not ;  that  he  did  not  just  as  rigorously  observe  the  pe- 
culiar mode  which  that  science  employs  in  passing  from 
the  known  to  the  unknown,  the  peculiar  logic  of  the 
law,  as  if  he  had  never  investigated  any  other  than  le- 
gal truth  by  any  other  organon  than  legal  logic  in  his 
life.  Peculiarities  of  legal  reasoning  he  certainly  had, 
belonging  to  the  peculiar  structure  and  vast  power  of 
his  mind ;  more  original  thought,  more  discourse  of  prin- 
ciples, less  of  that  mere  subtlety  of  analysis,  which  is  not 
restrained  by  good  sense,  and  the  higher  power  of  duly 
tempering  and  combining  one  truth  in  a  practical  sci- 


23 


ence  with  other  truths,  from  absurdity  or  mischief,  but 
still  it  was  all  strict  and  exact  legal  reasoning.  The 
long  habit  of  employing  the  more  popular  methods,  the 
probable  and  plausible  conjectures,  the  approximations, 
the  compromises  of  deliberative  discussion,  did  not  seem 
to  have  left  the  least  trace  on  his  vocabulary,  or  his  rea- 
sonings, or  his  demeanor.  No  doubt,  as  a  part  of  his 
whole  culture,  it  helped  to  give  enlargement  and  gen- 
eral power  and  elevation  of  mind ;  but  the  sweet  stream 
passed  under  the  bitter  sea,  the  bitter  sea  pressed  on  the 
sweet  stream,  and  each  flowed  unmingled,  unchanged  in 
taste  or  color. 

I  have  said  that  this  double  eminence  is  rare,  if  not 
unprecedented.  We  do  no  justice  to  Mr.  Webster,  if 
we  do  not  keep  this  ever  in  mind.  How  many  exem- 
plifications of  it  do  you  find  in  British  public  life  ?  The 
Earl  of  Chatham,  Burke,  Fox,  Sheridan,  Windham,  Pitt, 
Grattan,  Canning,  Peel  —  were  they  also,  or  any  one,  the 
acknowledged  leader  in  Westminster  Hall  or  on  the 
circuit  ?  And,  on  the  other  hand,  Avould  you  say  that  the 
mere  parliamentary  career  of  Mansfield,  or  Thurlow,  or 
Dunning,  or  Erskine,  or  Camden,  or  Curran,  would  com- 
pare in  duration,  constancy,  variety  of  effort,  the  range 
of  topics  discussed,  the  fulness,  extent  and  affluence  of 
the  discussion,  the  influence  exerted,  the  space  filled, 
the  senatorial  character  completely  realized  —  with  his? 
In  our  own  public  life  it  is  easier  to  find  a  parallel. 
Great  names  crowd  on  us  in  each  department ;  greater, 
or  more  loved,  or  more  venerable,  no  annals  can  show. 


li' 


1  i 


24 


But  how  few,  even   here,  have   gathered  the  double 
wreath,  and  the  blended  fame ! 

And  now,  having  observed  the  fact  of  this  combina- 
tion of  quality  and  excellence  scarcely  compatible, 
inspect  for  a  moment  each  by  itself 

The  professional  life  of  Mr.  Webster  began  in  the 
spring  of  1805.  It  may  not  be  said  to  have  ended 
until  he  died;  but  I  do  not  know  that  it  happened 
to  him  to  appear  in  court,  for  the  trial  of  a  cause,  after 
his  argument  of  the  Goodyear  patent  for  improvements 
in  the  preparation  of  India  Rubber,  in  Trenton,  in 
March,  1852. 

There  I  saw,  and  last  heard  him.  The  thirty-four 
years  which  had  elapsed  since,  a  member  of  this  Col- 
lege, at  home  for  health,  I  first  saw  and  heard  him  in 
the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts,  in  the  county  of 
Essex,  defending  Jackman,  accused  of  the  robbery  of 
Goodrich,  had  in  almost  all  things  changed  him.  The 
raven  hair,  the  vigorous,  full  frame  and  firm  tread,  the 
eminent  but  severe  beauty  of  the  countenance,  not  yet 
sealed  with  the  middle  age  of  man,  the  exuberant 
demonstration  of  all  sorts  of  power,  which  so  marked 
him  at  first  —  for  these,  as  once  they  were,  I  explored 
in  vain.  Yet  how  fiir  higher  was  the  interest  that 
attended  him  now:  his  sixty-nine  years  robed,  as  it 
were,  with  honor  and  with  love,  with  associations  of 
great  service  done  to  the  state,  and  of  great  fame 
gathered  and  safe;  and  then  the  perfect  mastery  of 
the  cause  in  its  legal  and  scientific  principles,  and  in 


25 


i 


of 


m 


all  its  facts ;  the  admirable  clearness  and  order  in 
which  his  propositions  were  advanced  successively;  the 
power,  the  occasional  high  ethical  tone,  the  appropriate 
eloquence,  by  which  they  were  made  probable  and 
persuasive  to  the  judicial  reason,  these  announced  the 
leader  of  the  American  bar,  with  every  flxculty  and 
every  accomplishment  by  which  he  had  won  that  proud 
title,  wholly  unimpaired ;  the  eye  not  dim  nor  the 
natural  force  abated. 

I  cannot  here  and  now  trace,  with  any  minuteness, 
the  course  of  Mr.  Webster  at  the  bar  during  these 
forty-eight  years  from  the  opening  of  his  office  in 
Boscawen ;  nor  convey  any  impression  whatever  of  the 
aggregate  of  labor  which  that  course  imposed ;  or  of 
the  intellectual  power  which  it  exacted ;  nor  indicate 
the  stages  of  his  rise ;  nor  define  the  time  when  his 
position  at  the  summit  of  ilie  profession  may  be  said 
to  have  become  completely  vindicated.  You  know,  in 
general,  that  he  began  the  practice  of  the  law  in  New 
Hampshire  in  the  spring  of  1805 ;  that  he  prosecuted 
it,  here,  in  its  severest  school,  with  great  diligence,  and 
brilliant  success,  among  competitors  of  larger  experi- 
ence and  of  consummate  abilitv,  until  1810:  that  he 
then  removed  to  Massachusetts,  and  that  there,  in  the 
courts  of  that  State,  and  of  other  States,  and  in  those 
of  the  general  government,  and  especially  in  the  Su- 
preme Court  sitting  at  Washington,  he  pursued  it  as 
the  calling  by  which  he  was  to  earn  his  daily  bread, 
until  he  died.  You  know  indeed  that  he  did  not 
pursue  it  exactly  as  one  pursues  it  who  confines  himself 

3 


26 


to  an  office ;  and  seeks  to  do  the  current  and  miscella- 
neous business  of  a  single  bar.  His  professional  em- 
ployment, as  I  have  often  heard  him  say,  was  very 
much  the  preparation  of  opinions  on  important  ques- 
tions, presented  from  every  part  of  the  country;  and 
the  trial  of  causes.  This  kind  of  professional  life 
allowed  him  seasonable  vacations ;  and  it  accommodated 
itself  somewhat  to  the  exactions  of  his  other  and  public 
life.  But  it  was  all  one  long  and  continued  practice 
of  the  law ;  the  professional  character  was  never  put 
off;  nor  the  professional  robe  long  unworn  to  the 
last. 

You  know,  too,  his  character  as  a  jurist.  This  topic 
has  been  recently  and  separately  treated,  with  great 
ability,  by  one  in  a  high  degree  competent  to  the  task ; 
the  late  learned  Chief  Justice  of  New  Hampshire,  now 
Professor  of  Law  at  Cambridge  ;  and  it  needs  no  addi- 
tional illustration  from  me.  Yet,  let  me  say,  that 
herein,  also,  the  first  thing  which  strikes  you  is  the 
union  of  diverse,  and,  as  I  have  said,  what  might  have 
been  regarded  incompatible  excellences.  I  shall  sub- 
mit it  to  the  judgment  of  the  universal  American  bar, 
if  a  carefully  prepared  opinion  of  Mr.  Webster,  on  any 
question  of  law  whatever  in  the  whole  range  of  our 
jurisprudence,  would  not  be  accepted  everywhere  as  of 
the  most  commanding  authority,  and  as  the  highest 
evidence  of  legal  truth?  I  submit  it  to  that  same  judg- 
ment, if  for  many  years  before  his  death,  they  would 
not  have  rather  chosen  to  intrust  the  maintenance  and 
enforcement  of  any  important  proposition  of  law  what- 


27 


i 


ever,  before  any  legal  tribunal  of  character  whatever, 
to  his  best  exertion  of  his  faculties,  than  to  any  other 
ability  which  the  whole  wealth  of  the  profession  could 
supply  ? 

And  this  alone  completes  the  description  of  a  lawyer 
and  a  forensic  orator  of  the  first  rate ;  but  it  does  not 
complete  the  description  of  his  professional  character. 
By  the  side  of  all  this,  so  to  speak,  there  was  that  whole 
class  of  qualities  which  made  him  for  any  description  of 
trial  by  jury  whatever,  criminal  or  civil,  by  even  a  more 
universal  assent,  foremost.  For  that  form  of  trial  no 
faculty  was  unused  or  needless;  but  you  were  most 
struck  there  to  see  the  unrivalled  legal  reason  put  off, 
as  it  were,  and  reappear  in  the  form  of  a  robust  com- 
mon sense  and  eloquent  feeling,  applying  itself  to  an 
exciting  subject  of  business;  to  see  the  knowledge  of 
men  and  life  by  which  the  falsehood  and  veracity  of 
witnesses,  the  probabilities  and  improbabilities  of  trans- 
actions as  sworn  to,  were  discerned  in  a  moment ;  the 
direct,  plain,  forcible  speech ;  the  consummate  narrative, 
a  department  which  he  had  particularly  cultivated,  and 
in  which  no  man  ever  excelled  him ;  the  easy  and  per- 
fect analysis  by  which  he  conve}/od  his  side  of  the  cause 
to  the  mind  of  the  jury ;  the  occasional  gush  of  strong 
feeling,  indignation,  or  pity ;  the  masterly,  yet  natural 
way,  in  which  all  the  moral  emotions  of  which  his  cause 
was  susceptible,  were  called  to  use,  the  occasional  sove- 
reignty of  dictation  to  which  his  convictions  seemed 
spontaneously  to  rise.  His  efforts  in  trials  by  jury  com- 
pose a  more  traditional  and  evanescent  part  of  his  pro- 


\* 


I  I 


■  n 


28 

fessional  reputation  than  his  arguments  on  questions  of 
law  ;  but  I  ahnost  think  they  were  his  mightiest  profes- 
sional displays,  or  displays  of  any  kind,  after  all. 

One  such  I  stood  in  a  relation  to  witness  with  a  com- 
paratively easy  curiosity,  and  yet  with  intimate  and 
professional  knowledge  of  all  the  embarrassments  of  the 
case.  It  was  the  trial  of  John  Francis  Knapp,  charged 
with  being  present,  rading,  and  abetting  in  the  murder 
of  Joseph  White,  In  which  Mr.  Webster  conducted  the 
prosecution  for  the  Commonwealth ;  in  the  same  year 
witli  his  reply  to  Mr.  Ilayne,  in  the  Senate ;  and  a  few 
months  later ;  and  when  I  bring  to  mind  the  incidents 
of  that  trial :  the  necessity  of  proving  that  the  prisoner 
was  near  enough  to  the  chamber  in  which  the  murder 
was  being  counnitted  by  another  hand  to  aid  in  the  act ; 
and  was  there  with  the  intention  to  do  so,  and  thus  in 
point  of  law  did  aid  in  it  —  because  mere  accessorial 
guilt  was  not  enough  to  convict  him ;  the  difficulty  of 
proving  this  —  because  the  nearest  point  to  which  the . 
evidence  could  trace  him  was  still  so  distant  as  to  v/ar- 
rant  a  pretty  formidable  doubt  whether  mere  curiosity 
had  not  carried  him  thither ;  and  whether  he  could  in 
any  useful,  or  even  conceivable  manner  have  cooperated 
with  the  actual  murderer,  if  he  had  intended  to  do  so ; 
and  because  the  only  mode  of  rendering  it  probable 
that  he  was  there  with  a  purpose  of  guilt  was  by  show- 
ing that  he  was  one  of  the  parties  to  a  conspiracy  of 
murder,  whose  very  existence,  actors,  and  objects,  had  to 
be  made  out  by  the  collation  or  the  widest  possible 
range  of  circumstances  —  some  of  them  pr-  tty  loose  — 


29 


and  even  if  ho  was  a  conspirator  it  did  not  quite  neces- 
sarily follow  that  any  active  participation  was  assigned 
to  him  for  his  part,  any  more  than  to  his  brother,  who, 
confessedly  took  no  such  part  —  the  great  number  of 
witnesses  to  bo  examined  and  cross-examined,  a  duty 
devolving  wholly  on  him ;  the  quick  and  sound  judg- 
ment demanded  and  supplied  to  determine  what  to  use 
and  what  to  reject  of  a  mass  of  rather  unmanageable 
materials;  the  points  in  the  law  of  evidence  to  be 
argued  —  in  the  course  of  which  ho  made  an  appeal  to 
the  Bench  on  the  complete  impunity  which  the  rejection 
of  the  prisoner's  confession  would  give  to  the  murder, 
in  a  style  of  dignity  and  energy,  I  should  rather  say,  of 
grandeur  which  I  never  heard  him  equal  before  or  after; 
the  high  ability  and  fidelity  with  which  every  part  of 
the  defence  was  conducted ;  and  the  great  final  sum- 
ming up  to  which  he  brought,  and  in  which  he  needed, 
the  utmost  exertion  of  every  faculty  he  possessed  to 
persuade  the  jury  that  the  obligation  of  that  duty  the 
sense  of  which,  he  said,  "  pursued  us  ever :  it  is  omni- 
present like  the  Deity :  if  we  take  the  wings  of  the 
morning  and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea, 
duty  performed  or  duty  violated  is  still  with  us  for  our 
liaj)piness  or  misery  "  —  to  persuade  them  that  this  obli- 
gation demanded  that  on  his  proofs  they  should  convict 
the  prisoner :  to  which  he  brought  first  the  profound  be- 
lief of  his  guilt,  without  which  he  could  not  have  prose- 
cuted him;  then  skill  consummate  in  inspiring  them 
with  a  desire  or  a  willingness  to  bo  instrumental  in  de- 
tecting that  guilt ;  and  to  lean  on  him  in  the  effort  to 

3* 


r  !^ 


80 


I 


detect  it ;  tlien  every  resource  of  professional  ability  to 
break  the  force  of  the  propositions  of  the  defence,  and 
to  cstabHsh  the  truth  of  his  own  :  inferring  a  conspiracy 
to  which  the  prisoner  was  a  party,  from  circumstances 
acutely  ridiculed  by  the  able  counsel  opposing  him  as 
"Stuft"  —  but  woven  by  him  into  strong  and  uniform 
tissue ;  and  then  bridging  over  from  the  conspiracy  to 
the  not  very  necessary  inference  that  the  particular  con- 
spirator on  trial  was  at  his  post,  in  execution  of  it, 
to  aid  and  abet  —  the  picture  of  the  nun-der  with  which 
he  begun  —  not  for  rhetorical  display,  but  to  inspire 
solemnity,  and  horror,  and  a  desire  to  detect  and  punish 
for  justice  and  for  security ;  the  sublime  exhortation  to 
duty  with  which  he  closed — resting  on  the  universality, 
and  authoritativencss  and  eternity  of  its  obligation  — 
which  left  in  every  juror's  mind  the  impression  that  it 
was  the  duty  of  convicting  in  this  particular  case  the 
sense  of  which  would  be  with  him  in  the  hour  of  death, 
and  in  the  judgment,  and  forever  —  with  these  recollec- 
tions of  that  trial  I  cannot  help  thinking  it  a  more  diffi- 
cult and  higher  efibrt  of  mind  than  that  more  famous 
•'  Oration  for  the  Crown." 

It  would  be  not  unpleasing  nor  inappropriate  to  pause, 
and  recall  the  names  of  some  of  that  succession  of  com- 
petitors by  whose  rivalry  the  several  stages  of  his  pro- 
fessional life  were  honored  and  exercised ;  and  of  some 
of  the  eminent  judicial  persons  who  presided  over  that 
various  and  high  contention.  Time  scarcely  permits 
this ;  but  in  the  briefest  notice  I  must  take  occasion  to 
say  that  perhaps  the  most  important   influence  —  cer- 


I 


31 


ttiinly  the  most  important  curly  inlliiciioc  —  on  liis  pro- 
fessional traits  and  fortunes,  was  that  excrtod  ])y  the 
great  general  abilities,  impressive  character,  and  legal 
genius  of  Mr.  Mason.  Who  he  was  you  aV  'now.  How 
much  the  jurisprudence  of  New  Hampshire  owes  to  him  ; 
what  deep  traces  he  left  on  it;  how  much  he  did  to 
promote  the  culture,  and  to  preserve  the  integrity  of  the 
old  conunon  law ;  to  adapt  it  to  your  wants,  and  your 
institutions;  and  to  construct  a  system  of  practice  by 
which  it  was  administered  with  extraordinary  energy 
and  effectiveness  for  the  discovery  of  truth,  and  the 
enforcement  of  right;  you  of  the  legal  profession  of  this 
state  will  ever  be  proud  to  acknowledge.  Another 
forum  in  a  neighboring  coimnonwcalth,  witnessed  and 
profited  by  the  last  labors,  and  enlarged  studies  of  the 
consummate  lawyer  and  practiser ;  and  at  an  earlier  day 
the  Senate,  the  country,  had  recognized  his  vast  practi- 
cal wisdom  and  sagacity,  the  fruit  of  the  highest  intel- 
lectual endowments,  matured  thought,  and  profound 
observation ;  his  fidelity  to  the  obligations  of  that  party 
connection  to  which  he  was  attached ;  his  fidelity  through 
all  his  life,  still  more  conspicuous,  and  still  more  admi- 
rable, to  the  higher  obligations  of  a  considerate  and  en- 
larged patriotism.  He  had  been  more  than  fourteen 
years  at  the  bar,  wdien  Mr.  Webster  came  to  it ;  he  dis- 
cerned instantly  what  manner  of  man  his  youthful  com- 
petitor was ;  he  admitted  him  to  his  intimate  friendship ; 
and  paid  him  the  unequivocal  compliment,  and  did  him 
the  real  kindness  of  compelling  him  to  the  utmost  exer- 
tion of  his  diligence  and  capacity  by  calling  out  against 


",l 


i 


i\ 


00 


him  all  his  own.  "  The  proprieties  of  this  occasion  "  — 
these  are  Mr.  Webster's  words  in  presenting  the  resolu- 
tions of  the  Suflblk  Bar  upon  Mr.  Mason's  death  —  "  com- 
pel me,  with  whatever  reluctance,  to  refrain  from  the 
indulgence  of  the  personal  feelings  which  arise  in  my 
heart  upon  the  death  of  one  with  whom  I  have  culti- 
vatod  a  sincere,  affectionate,  and  unbroken  friendship  from 
the  day  when  I  commenced  my  own  professional  career 
to  the  closing  hour  of  his  life.  I  will  not  say  of  the  ad- 
vantages which  I  have  derived  from  his  intercourse  and 
conversation  all  that  Mr.  Fox  said  of  Edmund  Burke, 
but  I  am  bound  to  say,  that  of  my  own  professional  dis- 
cipline and  attainments,  whatever  they  may  be,  I  owe 
much  to  that  close  attention  to  the  dischargt  of  my  du- 
ties which  I  was  compelled  to  pay  for  nine  successive 
years,  from  day  to  day,  by  Mr.  Mason's  elTorts  and  argu- 
ments at  the  same  bar.  I  must  have  been  unintelligent 
indeed,  not  to  have  learned  something  from  the  constant 
displays  of  that  power  which  I  had  so  much  occasion  to 
see  and  feel." 

I  reckon  next  to  his,  for  the  earlier  time  of  his  life, 
the  influence  of  the  learned  and  accomplished  8mith ; 
and  next  to  these  —  some  may  believe  greater  —  is  that 
of  Mr.  Justice  Story.  That  extraordinary  person  had 
been  admitted  to  the  bar  in  Essex  in  Massachusetts  in 
1801 ;  and  he  was  engaged  in  many  trials  in  the  county 
of  Rockingham  in  this  state  before  Mr.  Webster  had  as- 
sumed his  own  established  position.  Their  political 
opinions  differed ;  but  such  was  his  affluence  of  know- 
ledge already ;  such  his  stimulant  enthusiasm  j  he  was 


88 


burning;  with  so  incrcdihle  a  passiao  ihv  l  iiniifv  and 
faino,  that  the  inlluence  on  the  .still  vt>'  «t:  \V('b>  r  was 
instant ;  and  it  was  great  and  pernuuient.  It  was  re- 
ciprocal too;  and  an  intimacy  ])egan  that  attended  the 
whole  course  of  honor  through  which  each,  in  his  several 
sphere,  ascended.  Parsons  ho  saw,  also,  l)ut  rarely  ;  and 
Dexter  oftener,  and  with  more  nearness  of  ol)servation, 
while  yet  laying  the  foundation  of  his  own  mind  and 
character;  and  he  shared  largely  in  the  universal  admi- 
ration of  that  time,  and  of  this,  of  their  attainments,  and 
genius,  and  diverse  greatness. 

As  he  came  to  the  grander  practice  of  the  national 
bar,  other  competition  was  to  be  encountered.  Other 
names  begin  to  solicit  us ;  other  contention ;  higher 
prizes.  It  would  be  quite  within  the  proprieties  of  this 
discourse  to  remember  the  parties,  at  least,  to  some  of 
the  higher  causes,  by  which  his  ultimate  professional 
fame  was  built  uj) ;  even  if  I  coidd  not  hope  to  convey 
any  impression  of  the  novelty  and  difficulty  of  the 
questions  which  they  involved,  or  of  the  positive  addi- 
tion which  the  argument,  and  judgment,  made  to  the 
treasures  of  our  constitutional  and  general  jurispru- 
dence. But  there  is  only  one  of  which  1  have  time 
to  say  any  thing,  and  that  is  the  case  which  cstal)lished 
the  inviolability  of  tlie  charter  of  Dartmouth  College 
by  the  Legislature  of  the  State  of  New  Hampshire. 
Acts  of  the  Legislature,  passed  in  the  year  181G,  had 
invaded  its  charter.  A  suit  was  brought  to  test  their 
validity.  It  was  tried  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
State;  a  judgment  was  given  against  the  College,  and 


■  i\ 


34 


this  was  appcalod  to  tlio  SupnMno  Federal  Court  l)y 
■writ  of  error.  Upon  solonm  ar«^umeiit  the  chartor  was 
decided  to  he  a  contract  whose  o))hgation  a  State  may 
not  impair ;  the  acts  were  decided  to  he  invalid  as  an 
attempt  to  impair  it,  and  you  hohl  your  charter  under 
that  decision  to-day.  Ilow  much  Mr.  Wehstcr  con- 
trihuted  to  that  result,  how  much  the  efl'ort  advanced 
his  own  distinction  at  the  har,  you  all  know.  Well, 
as  if  of  yesterday,  I  remember  how  it  was  written 
homo  from  Washin«^ton,  that  "  Mr.  Webster  closed  a 
legal  argument  of  great  power  by  a  peroration  which 
charmed  and  melted  his  aujliencc."  Often  since  I  have 
heard  vague  accounts,  not  much  more  satisfactory,  of 
the  speech  and  the  scene.  I  was  aware  that  the  report 
of  his  argument,  as  it  was  published,  did  not  contain 
the  actual  peroration,  and  I  supposed  it  lost  forever. 
By  the  great  kindness  of  a  learned  and  excellent  per- 
son. Dr.  Chauncy  A.  Goodrich,  a  professor  in  Yale 
College,  with  whom  I  had  not  the  honor  of  acquaint- 
ance, although  his  virtues,  accomplishments,  and  most 
useful  life,  were  well  known  to  me,  I  can  read  to  you 
the  words  whose  power,  when  those  lips  spoke  them, 
so  many  owned,  although  they  could  not  repeat  them. 
As  those  lips  spoke  them,  we  shall  hear  them  never- 
more, but  no  utterance  can  extinguish  their  simple, 
sweet,  and  perfect  beauty.  Let  me  first,  bring  the 
general  scene  before  you,  and  then  you  will  hear  the 
rest  in  Mr.  Goodrich's  description.  It  was  in  1818,  in 
the  thirty-seventh  year  of  Mr.  Webster's  age.  It  was 
addressed   to   a   tribunal    presided   over  by   Marshall, 


85 


nsisiMtod  by  Wti.shington,  Livingston,  Johnson,  Story, 
Todd,  and  Duvall  —  a  trihunul  unsurpassud  on  iMirtli 
in  idl  that  gives  illustration  to  a  bunch  of  law,  and 
sustained  and  venerated  by  a  noble  bar.  lie  had 
called  to  hirt  aid  the  ripe  and  beautiful  culture  of 
II(»[)kinson;  and  of  his  opponents  was  William  Wirt, 
then  and  ever  of  the  leaders  of  the  bar,  who,  with 
faculties  and  accomplishments  fitting  him  to  adorn  and 
guide  public  life,  abounding  in  deep  professional  learn- 
ing, and  in  the  most  various  and  elegant  accjuisitions  — 
a  ripe  and  splendid  orator,  made  so  by  genius  and  the 
most  assiduous  culture  —  consecrated  all  to  the  service 
of  the  law.  It  was  before  that  tribunal,  and  in  pre- 
sence of  an  audience  select  and  critical,  among  whoiii, 
it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind,  were  some  graduates  of  the 
college,  who  were  attending  to  assist  against  her,  that 
he  opened  the  cause.  I  gladly  proceed  in  the  words 
of  Mr.  Goodrich. 


w 


"  Before  going  to  Washington,  which  1  did  chielly  for 
the  sake  of  hearing  Mr.  W^ebster,  I  was  told  that,  in 
arguing  the  case  at  Exeter,  New  Hampshire,  he  had  left 
the  whole  court-room  in  tears  at  the  conclusion  of  his 
speech.  This,  I  confess,  struck  me  unpleasantly  —  any 
attempt  at  pathos  on  a  purely  legal  question  like  this, 
seemed  hardly  in  good  taste.  On  my  way  to  Washing- 
ton, I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Webster.  We  were 
together  for  several  days  in  Philadelphia,  at  the  house 
of  a  common  friend ;  and  as  the  College  question  was 
one  of  deep  interest  to  literary  men,  we  conversed  often 


86 


and  largely  on  the  subject.  As  he  dwelt  upon  the  lead- 
ing points  of  the  case,  in  terms  so  calm,  simjile,  and  pre- 
cise, I  said  to  myself  more  than  once,  in  reference  to 
the  story  I  had  heard,  '  Whatever  may  have  seemed  ap- 
proj^riato  in  defending  the  College  at  home,  and  on  her 
own  ground,  there  will  be  no  appeal  to  the  feelings  of 
Judge  Marshall  and  his  associates  at  Washington.'  The 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  held  its  session, 
that  -winter,  in  a  mean  apartment  of  moderate  size  — 
the  Capitol  not  having  been  built  after  its  destruction 
in  1814.  The  audience,  when  the  case  came  on,  was 
therefore  small,  consisting  chiefly  of  legal  men,  the  elKe 
of  the  profession  throughout  the  country.  Mr.  Webster 
entered  upon  his  argimient  in  the  calm  tone  of  easy 
and  dignified  conversation.  Ilis  matter  was  so  com- 
pletely at  his  command  that  he  scarcely  looked  at  his 
brief,  but  went  on  for  more  than  four  hours  with  a 
statement  so  luminous,  and  a  chain  of  reasoning  so  easy 
to  be  understood,  and  yet  approaching  so  nearly  to  ab- 
solute demonstration,  that  he  seemed  to  carry  with  him 
every  man  of  his  audience  without  the  slightest  effort 
or  weariness  on  either  side.  It  was  hardly  eloquence,  in 
the  strict  sense  of  the  term  ;  it  was  pure  reason.  Now 
and  then,  for  a  sentence  or  two,  his  eye  flashed  and  his 
voice  swelled  into  a  bolder  note,  as  he  uttered  some  em- 
phatic thought;  but  he  instantly  fell  back  into  the  tone 
of  earnest  conversation,  which  ran  throughout  the  great 
body  of  his  speech.  A  single  circumstance  will  show 
you  the  clearness  and  absorbing  power  of  his  argument. 
"  I  observed  that  Judge  Story,  at  the  opening  of  the 


:  I 

f         fc 


37 


case,  had  prepared  himself,  pen  in  hand,  as  if  to  take 
copious  minutes.  Hour  after  hour  I  saw  him  fixed  in 
the  same  attitude,  but,  so  far  as  I  could  perceive,  with 
not  a  note  on  his  paper.  The  argument  closed,  and  / 
could  not  discover  that  he  had  taken  a  single  note.  Others 
around  me  remarked  the  same  thing,  and  it  was  among 
the  on  dits  of  Washington,  that  a  friend  spoke  to  him  of 
the  fact  with  surprise,  when  the  Judge  remarked, '  every 
thing  was  so  clear,  and  so  easy  to  remember,  that  not 
a  note  seemed  necessary,  and,  in  fact,  I  thought  little  or 
nothing  about  my  notes.' 

"  The  argument  ended.  Mr.  Webster  stood  for  some 
moments  silent  before  the  Court,  while  every  eye  was 
fixed  intently  upon  him.  At  length,  addressing  the 
Chief  Justice,  Marshall,  he  proceeded  thus  :  — 

"  ^  This,  Sir,  is  my  case  I  It  is  the  case,  not  merely  of 
that  humble  institution,  it  is  the  case  of  every  College 
in  our  land.  It  is  more.  It  is  the  case  of  every  Elee- 
mosynary Institution  throughout  our  country  —  of  all 
those  great  charities  founded  by  the  piety  of  our  ances- 
tors to  alleviate  human  misery,  and  scatter  blessings 
along  the  pathway  of  life.  It  is  more  !  It  is,  in  some 
sense,  the  case  of  every  man  among  us  who  has  pro- 
perty of  which  he  may  be  stripped,  for  the  question  is 
simply  this  :  Shall  our  State  Legislatures  be  allowed  to 
take  that  which  is  not  their  own,  to  turn  it  from  its 
original  use,  and  apply  it  to  such  ends  or  purposes  as 
they,  in  their  discretion,  shall  see  fit ! 

" '  Sir,  you  may  destroy  this  little  Institution  j  it  is 
weak ;  it  is  in  your  hands !     I  know  it  is  one  of  the 


! 


38 


lesser  lights  in  the  literary  horizon  of  our  country. 
You  may  put  it  out.  But  if  you  do  so,  you  must  carry 
through  your  work !  You  must  extinguish,  one  after 
another,  all  those  great  lights  of  science  which,  for  more 
than  a  century,  have  thrown  their  radiance  over  our 
land ! 

" '  It  is,  Sir,  as  I  have  said,  a  small  College.     And  yet, 
ihere  arc  those  who  love  it .' 

"  Here  the  feelings  which  he  had  thus  far  succeeded  in 
kee2:)ing  down,  broke  forth.  His  lips  quivered ;  his  firm 
cheeks  trembled  with  emotion ;  his  eyes  were  filled  with 
tears,  his  voice  choked,  and  he  seemed  struggling  to  the 
utmost  simply  to  gain  that  mastery  over  himself  which 
might  save  him  from  an  unmanly  burst  of  feeling.  I 
will  not  attempt  to  give  you  the  few  broken  words  of 
tenderness  in  which  he  went  on  to  speak  of  his  attach- 
ment to  the  College.  The  whole  seemed  to  be  mingled 
throughout  with  the  recollections  of  father,  mother, 
brother,  and  all  the  trials  and  privations  through  which 
he  had  made  his  way  into  life.  Every  one  saw  that  it 
was  wholly  unpremeditated,  a  pressure  on  his  heart, 
which  sought  relief  in  words  and  tears. 

"  The  court  room  during  these  two  or  three  minutes 
presented  an  extraordinary  spectacle.  Chief  Justice 
Marshall,  with  his  tall  and  gaunt  figure  bent  over  as  if 
to  catch  the  slightest  whisper,  the  deep  furrows  of  his 
cheek  expanded  with  emotion,  and  eyes  suffused  with 
tears ;  Mr.  Justice  "Washington  at  his  side,  with  his  small 
and  emaciated  frame  and  countenance  more  like  marble 
than  I  ever  saw  on  any  other  human  being  —  leaning 


39 


forward  with  an  eager,  troubled  look ;  and  the  remain- 
der of  the  Coii  t,  at  the  two  extremities,  pressing,  as  it 
were,  toward  a  single  point,  while  the  audience  below 
were  wrapping  themselves  round  in  closer  folds  beneath 
the  bench  to  catch  each  look,  and  every  movement  of 
the  speaker's  face.  If  a  painter  could  give  us  the  scene 
on  canvas — those  forms  and  countenances,  and  Daniel 
Webster  as  he  then  stood  in  the  midst,  it  would  be  one 
of  the  most  touching  pictures  in  the  history  of  eloquence. 
One  thing  it  taught  me,  that  the  imtlicilc  depends  not 
merely  on  the  words  uttered,  but  still  more  on  the 
estimate  we  put  upon  him  who  utters  them.  There  was 
not  one  auiong  the  strong-minded  men  of  that  assembly 
who  could  think  it  unmanly  to  weep,  when  he  saw 
standing  before  him  the  man  who  had  made  such  an 
argument,  melted  into  the  tenderness  of  a  child. 

"  Mr.  Webster  had  now  recovered  his  composiu'e,  and 
fixing  his  keen  eye  on  the  Chief  Justice,  said,  in  that 
deep  tone  with  which  he  sometimes  thrilled  the  heart  of 
an  audience :  — 

"'Sir,  I  know  not  how  others  may  feel,'  (glancing  at 
the  opponents  of  the  College  before  him,)  '  but,  for  my- 
self, when  I  see  my  alma  mater  surrounded,  like  Caisar 
m  the  senate  house,  by  those  who  are  reiterating  stab 
upon  stab,  I  would  not,  for  this  right  hand,  have  her 
turn  to  me,  and  say,  Et  in  qnoquc  mi  fill !  And  iliou 
too,  my  son!' 

"He  sat  down.  There  was  a  deathlike  stillness 
throughout  the  room  for  some  moments ;  every  one 
seemed   to  be   slowly  recovering  himself,  and  coming 


^ 


40 


gradually  back  to  his  ordinary  range  of  thought  and 
fueling." 


I     \ 


It  Avas  while  Mr.  Webster  was  ascending  through  the 
long  gradations  of  the  legal  profession  to  its  highest 
rank,  that  by  a  parallel  series  of  display  on  a  stage,  and 
in  parts  totally  distinct,  by  other  studies,  thoughts,  and 
actions  he  rose  also  to  be  at  his  death  the  first  of  Amer- 
ican Statesmen.  The  last  of  the  mighty  rivals  was 
dead  before,  and  he  stood  alone.  Give  this  aspect  also 
of  his  greatness  a  passing  glance.  His  public  life  began 
in  May  1813,  in  the  House  of  Representatives  in  Con- 
gress, to  which  this  State  had  elected  him.  It  ended 
when  he  died.  If  you  except  the  interval  between  his 
removal  from  New  Hampshire  and  his  election  in  Massa- 
chusetts, it  was  a  public  life  of  forty  years.  By  what 
political  morality,  and  by  what  enlarged  patriotism,  em- 
bracing the  whole  country,  that  life  was  guided,  I  shall 
consider  hereafter.  Let  me  now  fix  your  attention 
rather  on  the  magnitude  and  variety  and  actual  value 
of  the  service.  Consider  that  from  the  day  he  went 
upon  the  Committee  of  Foreign  Relations,  in  1813,  in 
time  of  war,  and  more  and  more,  the  longer  he  lived 
and  the  higher  he  rose,  he  was  a  man  whose  great 
talents  and  devotion  to  public  duty  placed  and  kept 
him  in  a  position  of  associated  or  sole  command ;  com- 
mand in  the  political  connection  to  which  he  belonged, 
command  in  opposition,  command  in  power ;  and  appre- 
ciate the  responsibilities  which  that  implies,  what  care, 
what  prudence,  what  mastery  of  the  whole  ground  — 


41 


B  — 


exacting  for  the  conduct  of  a  party,  as  Gibbon  says  of 
Fox,  abilities  and  civil  discretion  equal  to  the  conduct 
of  an  empire.  Consider  the  work  he  did  in  that  life  of 
forty  years — the  range  of  subjects  investigated  and 
discussed :  composing  the  whole  theory  and  practice  of 
our  organic  and  administrative  politics,  foreign  and  do- 
mestic :  the  vast  body  of  instructive  thought  he  pro- 
duced and  put  'n  possession  of  the  country ;  how  much 
he  achieved  in  congress  as  well  as  at  the  bar,  to  fix  the 
true  interpretation,  as  well  as  to  impress  the  transcen- 
dent value  of  the  constitution  itself,  as  much  altogether 
as  any  jurist  or  statesman  since  its  adoption ;  how  much 
to  establish  in  the  general  mind  the  great  doctrine  tliat 
the  government  of  the  United  States  is  a  government 
pro2)er,  established  by  the  people  of  the  States,  not  a 
comj)act  between  sovereign  communities,  —  that  within 
its  limits  it  is  sujjreme,  and  that  whether  it  is  within  its* 
limits  or  not,  in  any  given  exertion  of  itself,  is  to  be 
determined  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
—  the  ultimate  arbiter  in  the  last  resort  —  from  which 
there  is  no  appeal  but  to  revolution ;  how  much  he  did 
in  the  course  of  the  discussions  which  grew  out  of  the 
proposed  mission  to  Panama,  and,  at  a  later  day,  out  of 
the  removal  of  the  deposits,  to  place  the  executive 
department  of  the  government  on  its  true  basis,  and 
under  its  true  limitations ;  to  secure  to  that  department 
all  its  just  powers  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other 
hand  to  vindicate  to  the  legislative  department,  and 
especially  to  the  senate,  all  that  belong  to  them;  to 
arrest  the   tendencies  which  he  thought  at  one   time 


,^ 


42 


.  .if 


thrcatenecl  to  substitute  the  government  of  a  single 
will,  of  a  single  person  of  great  force  of  character  and 
boundless  popularity,  and  of  a  numerical  majority  of 
the  people,  told  by  the  head,  without  intermediate  insti- 
tutions of  any  kind,  judicial  or  senatorial,  in  place  of 
the  elaborate  system  of  checks  and  balances,  by  which 
the  constitution  aimed  at  a  government  of  laws,  and  not 
of  men;  how  much,  attracting  less  popular  attention, 
but  scarcely  less  important,  to  complete  the  great  work 
which  experience  had  shown  to  be  left  unfinished  by 
the  judiciary  act  of  1789,  by  providing  for  the  punish- 
ment of  all  crimes  against  the  United  States;  how 
much  for  securing  a  safe  currency  and  a  true  financial 
system,  not  only  by  the  promulgation  of  sound  opinions, 
but  by  good  specific  measures  adopted,  or  bad  ones 
defeated;  how  much  to  develop  the  vast  material  re- 
sources of  the  country,  and  to  push  forward  the  plant- 
ing of  the  AYest — not  troubled  by  any  fear  of  exhausting 
old  States  —  by  a  liberal  policy  of  public  lands,  by 
vindicating  the  constitutional  power  of  Congress  to 
make  or  aid  in  making  large  classes  of  internal  improve- 
ments, and  by  acting  on  that  doctrine  uniformly  from 
1813,  whenever  a  road  was  to  be  built,  or  a  rapid  sup- 
pressed, or  a  canal  to  be  opened,  or  a  breakwater  or 
a  lighthouse  set  up  above  or  below  the  flow  of  the  tide, 
if  so  far  beyond  the  ability  of  a  single  state,  or  of  so 
wide  utility  to  commerce  and  labor  as  to  rise  to  the 
rank  of  a  work  general  in  its  influences  —  another  tie 
of  union  because  another  proof  of  the  beneficence  of 
union;  how  much  to  protect  the  vast  mechanical  and 


I 


43 


so 

the 

tie 

of 
ind 


manufacturing  interests  of  the  country,  a  value  of  many 
hundreds  of  millions  —  after  having  jjccn  lured  into 
existence  against  his  counsels,  against  his  science  of 
political  economy,  by  a  policy  of  artificial  encourage- 
ment—  from  being  sacrificed,  and  the  pursuits  and  plans 
of  large  regions  and  communities  broken  up,  and  the 
acquired  skill  of  the  country  squandered  by  a  sudden 
and  capricious  withdrawal  of  the  promise  of  the  govern- 
ment ;  how  much  for  the  right  performance  of  the  most 
delicate  and  difficult  of  all  tasks,  the  ordering  of  the 
foreign  affairs  of  a  nation,  free,  sensitive,  self-conscious, 
recognizing,  it  is  true,  public  law  and  a  morality  of  the 
State,  binding  on  the  conscience  of  the  State,  yet  asj)ir- 
ing  to  power,  eminence,  and  command,  its  whole  frame 
filled  full  and  all  on  fire  with  American  feeling,  sympa- 
thetic with  liberty  everywhere  —  how  much  for  the 
right  ordering  of  the  foreign  affairs  of  such  a  State  — 
aiming  in  all  his  policy,  from  his  speech  on  the  Greek 
question  in  1823,  to  his  letters  to  M.  Hulsemann  in 
1850,  to  occupy  the  high,  plain,  yet  dizzy  ground  which 
separates  influence  from  intervention,  to  avow  and  pro- 
mulgate warm  good  will  to  humanity,  wherever  striving 
to  be  free,  to  inquire  authentically  into  the  history  of 
its  struggles,  to  take  official  and  avowed  pains  to  ascer- 
tain the  moment  when  its  success  may  be  recognized, 
consistently,  ever,  with  the  great  code  that  keeps  the 
peace  of  the  world,  abstaining  from  every  thing  which 
shall  give  any  nation  a  right  under  the  law  of  nations 
to  utter  one  word  of  complaint,  still  less  to  retaliate  by 
war  —  the  sympathy,  but  also  the  neutrality,  of  Wash- 


44 


iiigton  —  how  imicli  to  compose  with  honor  a  conciir- 
ronco  of  diniculties  with  the  fir.st  power  in  the  world, 
wliich  any  thing  Icj^s  than  the  highest  clegrec  of  discre- 
tion, fn'mness,  ability,  and  means  of  commanding  respect 
and  confidence  at  home  and  abroad  would  inevitably 
have  conducted  to  the  last  calamity  —  a  disputed  boun- 
dary line  of  many  hundred  miles,  from  the  St.  Croix  to 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  which  divided  an  exasperated  and 
impracticable  border  population,  enlisted  the  pride  and 
aflected  the  interests  and  controlled  the  politics  of  i)ar- 
ticular  States,  as  well  as  pressed  on  the  peace  and  honor 
of  the  nation,  wliich  the  most  poj)ular  administrations 
of  the  era  of  the  quietest  and  best  public  feelings,  the 
times  of  Monroe  and  of  Jackson,  could  not  adjust; 
which  had  grown  so  complicated  with  other  topics  of 
excitement  that  one  false  step,  right  or  left,  would  have 
been  a  step  down  a  precipice  —  this  line  settled  forever 
—  the  claim  of  England  to  search  our  ships  for  the  sup- 
pression of  the  slave-trade  silenced  forever,  and  a  new 
engagement  entered  into  by  treaty,  binding  the  national 
faith  to  contribute  a  specific  naval  force  for  putting  an 
end  to  the  great  crime  of  man  —  the  long  practice  of 
England  to  enter  an  American  ship  and  impress  from  its 
crew,  terminated  forever ;  the  deck  henceforth  guarded 
sacredly  and  completely  by  the  flag  —  how  much  by 
profound  discernment,  by  eloquent  speech,  by  devoted 
life  to  strengthe  i  the  ties  of  Union,  and  breathe  the 
fine  and  strong  spirit  of  nationality  through  all  our 
numbers  —  how  much,  most  of  all,  last  of  all,  after  the 
war  with  Mexico,  needless  if  his  counsels  had  governed. 


I  : 


45 


!    of 


had  ended  in  so  vast  an  acquisition  of  territory,  in  pre- 
senting to  the  two  great  antagonist  sections  of  our 
country  so  vast  an  area  to  enter  on,  so  imperial  a  prize 
to  contend  for,  and  the  accursed  fraternal  strife  had 
begun  —  how  much  then,  when  rising  to  the  measure  of 
a  true,  and  ^.Liicult,  and  rare  greatness,  remembering 
that  he  had  a  country  to  save  as  well  as  a  local  constitu- 
ency to  gratify,  laying  all  the  wealth,  all  the  hopes,  of 
an  illustrious  life  on  the  altar  of  a  hazardous  patriotism, 
he  sought  and  won  the  more  exceeding  glory  which  now 
attends  —  which  in  the  next  age  shall  more  conspicu- 
ously attend  —  his  name  who  composes  an  agitated  and 
saves  a  sinking  land  —  recall  this  series  of  conduct  and 
influences,  study  them  carefully  in  their  facts  and  results 
—  the  reading  of  years  —  and  you  attain  to  a  true 
appreciation  of  this  aspect  of  his  greatness  —  his  public 
character  and  life. 

For  such  a  review  the  eulogy  of  an  hour  has  no 
room.  Such  a  task  demands  research  ;  details ;  proofs ; 
illustrations ;  a  long  labor  —  a  volume  of  history  com- 
posed according  to  her  severest  laws  —  setting  down 
nothing,  depreciating  nothing,  in  n  alignity  to  the 
dead ;  suppressing  nothing  and  falsifying  nothing  in 
adulation  of  the  dead ;  professing  fidelity  incorrupt  — 
unswerved  by  hatred  or  by  love,  yet  able  to  measure, 
able  to  glow  in  the  contemplation  of  a  true  greatness 
and  a  vast  and  varied  and  useful  public  life ;  such  a 
history  as  the  genius  and  judgment  and  delicate  pri- 
vate and  public  morality  of  Everett  —  assisted  by  his 
perfect  knowledge  of  the  facts  —  not  disqualified  by 


.\ 


t  < 


I 

i 


4G 


his  long-  IViendship  iincliillcd  to  the  last  hour  —  such 
a  history  as  he  ini«^ht  construct. 

Two  or  three  suggestions,  occurring  on  the  most 
general  observation  of  this  aspect  of  his  eminence,  you 
will  tolerate  as  I  leave  the  topic. 

Remark  how  very  large  a  proportion  of  all  this  class 
of  his  acts,  are  wholly  beyond,  and  outside,  of  the 
profession  of  the  law ;  demanding  studies,  experience, 
a  turn  of  mind,  a  cast  of  qualities  and  character,  such 
as  that  profession  neither  gives,  nor  exacts.  Some 
single  speeches  in  Congress  of  consummate  ability, 
have  been  made  by  great  lawyers,  drawing  for  the 
pm-pose,  only  on  the  learning,  accomplishments,  logic, 
and  eloquence  of  the  forum.  Such  was  Chief  Justice, 
then  Mr.  Marshall's  argimient  in  the  case  of  Jonathan 
Rol)bins  —  turning  on  the  interpretation  of  a  treaty, 
and  the  constitutional  power  of  the  executive ;  a  de- 
monstration if  there  is  any  in  Euclid  —  anticipating  the 
masterly  judgments  in  the  cause  of  Dartmouth  College, 
or  of  Gibbons  and  Ogclen,  or  of  Maculloch  and  the 
State  of  Maryland ;  but  such  an  one  as  a  lawyer  like 
him  —  if  another  there  was  —  could  have  made  in  his 
professional  capacity  at  the  bar  of  the  House,  although 
he  had  never  reflected  on  practical  politics  an  hour  in 
his  life.  Such  somewhat  was  William  Pinkney's  speech 
in  the  House  of  Representatives  on  the  treaty-making 
power,  in  1815,  and  his  two  more  splendid  displays,  in 
the  Senate,  on  the  Missouri  question,  in  1820,  the  last 
of  which  I  heard  Mr.  Clay  pronounce  the  greatest  he 
ever  heard.     They  were  pieces  of  legal  reasoning,  on 


47 


like 
his 


list 


111 


lino: 


in 

last 

he 


on 


questions  of  constitutional  hiw;  docoratod  of  courso  l)y 
a  rhetoric  Avhich    Ilortenslii.s  might   have   envied,  and 
Cicero  would  not  have  despised ;  but   they   Avere  pro- 
fessional at  last.     To  some  extent  this  is  true  of  some 
of  Mr.  Webster's  a])lest  speeches  in  Congress ;  or,  more 
accurately,  of  some  of  the  more  important  portions  of 
some  of  his  ablest.     I  should  say  so  of  a  part  of  that 
on  the  Panama  Mission;    of  the    reply  to    Mr.  Ilayne 
even ;   and  of  almost  the  whole  of  that  reply  to  Mr. 
Calhoun  on  the  thesis,  "  the  Constitution  not  a  compact 
between  sovereign  States ; "  the  whole  scries  of  discus- 
sion of  the  constitutional  power  of  the  Executive,  and 
the   constitutional   power  of  the  Senate,  growing  out 
of  the  removal  of  the  depositcs  and  the  supposed  ten- 
dencies of  our  system  towards  a  centralization  of  gov- 
ernment in  a  President,  and  a  majority  of  the  people  — 
marked,  all  of  them,  by  amazing  ability.     To  tliese  the 
lawyer  who  could  demonstrate  that  the  Charter  of  this 
College  is  a  contract  within  the  Constitution,  or    that 
the  Steamboat  Monopoly  usurped   upon  the  executed 
power  of  Congress  to  regulate  commerce,  was  already 
equal  —  but  to  have  been  the  leader,  or  of  the  leaders  of 
his  political  connection  for  thirty  years ;  to  have  been 
able  to  instruct  and  guide  on  every  question  of  policy 
as  Avell  as  law,  which  interested  the  nation  in  all  that 
time ;  every  question  of  finance ;   of  currency ;  of  the 
lands ;  of  the  development  and  care  of  our  resources  and 
labor ;   to   have  been  of  strength  to  help  to  lead  his 
country  by  the  hand,  up  to  a  position  of  influence  and 
attraction  on  the  highest  places  of  earth,  yet  to  keep 


48 


licr  peace,  and  to  keep  lier  honor;  to  have  heen  ul/"^ 
to  emuhite  the  prescriptive  and  awful  renown  of  .  , 
founders  of  States  by  doing  something  whicli  will  be 
admitted,  when  some  generations  have  passed,  even 
more  than  now,  to  have  contributed  to  preserve  the 
State  —  for  all  this  another  man  was  needed  —  and  ho 
stands  forth  another  and  the  same. 

1  am  hereafter  to  speak  separately  of  the  political 
morality  which  guided  him  ever,  but  I  would  say  a 
word  now  ou  two  portions  of  his  pid)lic  life,  one  of 
which  has  been  the  subject  of  accusatory,  the  other 
of  disparaging  criticism,  unsound  —  unkind  —  in  both  in- 
stances. 

The  first  comprises  his  course  in  regard  to  a  protec- 
tive policy.  He  opposed  a  tariff  of  protection  it  is  said, 
in  181G,  and  1820,  and  1824  ;  and  he  opposed,  in  1828, 
a  sudden  and  fatal  repeal  of  such  a  tarift';  and  there- 
upon I  have  seen  it  written  that  "  this  proved  him  a 
man  with  no  great  comprehensive  ideas  of  political 
economy  ;  who  took  the  fleeting  interests,  and  transient 
opinions  of  the  hour  for  his  norms  of  conduct;"  "who 
had  no  sober  and  serious  convictions  of  his  own."  I 
have  seen  it  more  decorously  written,  "  that  his  opinions 
on  this  subject  were  not  determined  by  general  prin- 
ciples, but  by  a  consideration  of  immediate  sectional 
interests." 

I  will  not  answer  this  by  what  Scaliger  says  of  Lipsius, 
the  arrogant  pedant  who  dogmatized  on  the  deeper  poli- 
tics uu  he  did  on  the  text  of  Tacitus  and  Seneca.  Neqtie 
est  polUicus  ;  ncc  poted  qvicquam  in  politid ;  niJiil  posswit  pe- 


40 


(Idi.iCS  ill  Ipsis  trhii.s :  ii/r  n/o,  nee  ((/I'lts  thiclnH  pnmoinnts  acrihn'C 
«fl  ^  liris.  1  HJiy  only  that  tlic  case  totally  fails  to  ^ivc 
color  to  the  clmrgo.  The  reasonings  of  Mr.  Webster  in 
IS  10,  IS'JO,  and  ]  824,  express,  tliat  on  mature  reflection, 
and  duo  and  appropriate  study  he  had  embraced  the 
opinion  that  it  was  needless  and  unwise  to  force  Ameri- 
can manufactures,  by  regulation,  prenuiturely  to  life, 
lired  in  a  connnercial  connnunity  ;  taught  from  liis  ear- 
liest hours  of  thought  to  regard  the  care  of  commerco 
as,  in  p'/;..t  of  fact,  a  leading  object  and  cause  of  the 
Union  :  to  observe  around  him  no  other  forms  of  ma- 
terial industry  than  those  of  commerce ;  navigation  ; 
fisheries ;  agriculture,  and  a  few  plain  and  robust  me- 
chanical arts,  he  would  come  to  the  stiuly  of  the  political 
econo.ny  of  the  subject  with  a  certain  preoccupation  of 
mind  perhaps ;  so  coming  he  did  study  it  at  its  well 
heads,  and  ho  adopted  his  conclusions  sincerely,  and 
announced  them  strongly. 

Ills  opinions  were  overruled  by  Congress  ;  and  a 
national  policy  was  adopted,  holding  out  all  conceivable 
promise  of  permanence,  under  which  vast  and  sensitive 
investments  of  capital  were  made;  the  expectations,  the 
emploj-ments,  the  habits,  of  whole  ranges  of  States  were 
recast;  an  industrj^,  now  to  us,  springing,  immature,  had 
been  advanced  just  so  far,  that  if  deserted,  at  that 
moment,  there  must  follow  a  squandering  of  skill ; 
a  squandering  of  property ;  an  aggregate  of  destruction, 
senseless,  needless,  and  unconscientious  —  such  as  marks 
the  worst  form  of  revolution.  On  these  facts,  at  a  later 
day,  he  thought  that  that  industry,  the  child  of  Govcru- 

5 


50 

ment,  should  not  thus  capriciously  be  deserted.  "  The 
duty  of  the  government,"  he  said,  "  at  the  present  mo- 
ment would  seem  to  be  to  preserve,  not  to  destroy ;  to 
maintain  the  position  which  it  has  assumed ;  and  for  one 
I  shall  feel  it  an  indispensable  obligation  to  hold  it 
steady,  as  far  as  in  my  power,  to  that  degree  of  protec- 
tion which  it  has  undertaken  to  bestow." 

And  does  this  prove  that  these  original  opinions  were 
hasty  ;  shallow  ;  insincere  ;  unstudied  ?  Consistently 
with  every  one  of  them ;  consistently  with  the  true 
spirit,  and  all  the  aims,  of  the  science  of  political  econ- 
omy itself;  consistently  with  every  duty  of  sober,  high, 
earnest,  and  moral  statesmanship,  might  not  he  who 
resisted  the  making  of  a  tariff'  in  1816,  deprecate  its 
abandonment  in  1828  ?  Does  not  Adam  Smith  himself 
admit  that  it  is  ^^  matter  fit  for  delihendion  how  far  or  in 
what  manner,  it  may  be  proper  to  restore  that  free  im- 
portation after  it  has  been  for  some  time  interrupted  ?  " 
implying  that  a  general  principle  of  national  wealth 
may  be  displaced  or  modified  by  special  circumstances 
—  but  would  these  censors  therefore  cry  out  that  he 
had  no  "  great  and  comprehensive  ideas  of  political  econ- 
omy," and  was  willing  to  be  "  determined  not  by  gene- 
ral principles,  but  by  immediate  interests  ?  "  Because  a 
father  advises  his  son  against  an  early  and  injudicious 
marriage  ;  does  it  logically  follow,  or  is  it  ethically  right, 
that  after  his  advice  has  been  disregarded,  he  is  to 
recommend  desertion  of  the  young  wife,  and  the  young 
child?  I  do  not  appreciate  the  beauty  and  "compre- 
hensiveness" of  those  scientific  ideas  which  forget  that 


I 


51 


the  actual  and  vast  "interests"  of  the  community  are 
exactly  what  the  legislator  has  to  protect ;  that  the  con- 
crete of  things  must  limit  the  foolish  wantonness  of  ci 
pnori  theory  ;  that  that  department  of  politics,  which 
has  for  its  object  the  promotion  and  distribution  of  the 
wealth  of  nations,  may  very  consistently,  and  very  sci- 
entifically preserve  what  it  would  not  have  created.  He 
who  accuses  Mr.  Webster  in  this  behalf  of  "  having  no 
sober  and  serious  convictions  of  his  own,"  must  afford 
some  other  proof  than  his  opposition  to  the  introduction 
of  a  policy  ;  and  then  his  willingness  to  protect  it  after 
it  had  been  introduced,  and  five  hundred  millions  of 
property,  or,  however,  a  countless  sum  had  been  invested 
under  it,  or  become  dependent  on  its  continuance. 

I  should  not  think  that  I  consulted  his  true  fame  if  I 
did  not  add  that  as  he  came  to  observe  the  practical 
workings  of  the  protective  policy  more  closely  than  at 
first  he  had  done  ;  as  he  came  to  observe  the  working  and 
influences  of  a  various  manufacturing  and  mechanical 
labor ;  to  see  how  it  employs  and  develops  every  facul- 
ty ;  finds  occupation  for  every  hour ;  creates  or  diffuses 
and  disciplines  ingenuity,  gathering  up  every  fragment 
of  mind  and  time  so  that  nothing  be  lost ;  how  a  steady 
and  ample  home  market  assists  agriculture ;  how  all  the 
great  eniployments  of  man  are  connected  by  a  kindred 
tie,  so  that  the  tilling  of  the  land,  navigation,  foreign, 
coastwise  and  interior  commerce,  all  grow  with  the 
growth,  and  strengthen  with  the  strength  of  the  indus- 
try of  the  arts  —  he  came  to  appreciate,  more  adequately 
than  at  first,  how  this  form  of  labor  contributes  to  wealth ; 


M 


52 


power ;  enjoyment ;  a  great  civilization  ;  he  came  more 
justly  to  grasp  the  conceptJon  of  how  consummate  a  de- 
struction it  would  cause  —  how  senseless,  how  unphilo- 
sophical,  how  immoral  —  to  arrest  it  suddenly  and  capri- 
ciously —  after  it  had  been  lured  into  life  ;  how  wiser  — 
how  far  truer  to  the  principles  of  the  science  which  seeks 
to  augment  the  wealth  of  the  State,  to  refuse  to  destroy 
so  immense  an  accumulation  of  that  wealth.  In  this 
sense,  and  in  this  way,  I  believe  his  opinions  were  ma- 
tured and  modified ;  but  it  does  not  quite  follow  that 
they  were  not,  in  every  period,  conscientiously  formed 
and  held,  or  that  they  w^ere  not  in  the  actual  circum- 
stances of  each  period  philosophically  just,  and  practi- 
cally wise. 

The  other  act  of  his  public  life  to  which  I  alluded  is 
his  negotiation  of  the  Treaty  of  Washington,  in  1842, 
with  Great  Britain.  This  act,  the  country,  the  world, 
has  judged,  and  has  applauded.  Of  his  administrative 
ability ;  his  discretion ;  temjjer ;  civil  courage ;  his  power 
of  exacting  respect  and  confidence  from  those  with  whom 
he  communicated ;  and  of  influencing  their  reason ;  his 
knowledge  of  the  true  interests  and  true  grandeur  of  the 
two  great  parties  to  the  negotiation ;  of  the  States  of 
the  Union  more  immediately  concerned,  and  of  the 
world  whose  chief  concern  is  peace ;  and  of  the  intre- 
pidity Avith  which  he  encountered  the  disappointed  feel- 
ings, and  disparaging  criticisms  of  the  hour,  in  the  con- 
sciousness that  he  had  done  a  good  and  large  deed,  and 
earned  a  permanent  and  honest  renown  —  of  these  it  is 
the  truest   and   most  fortunate   single   exemplification 


53 


which  remains  of  him.  Concerning  its  difficulty,  impor- 
tance and  merits  of  all  sorts,  there  were  at  the  time,  few 
dissenting  opinions  among  those  most  conversant  with 
the  subject,  although  there  were  some ;  to-day  there  are 
fewer  still.  They  are  so  few  —  a  single  sneer  by  the 
side  of  his  grave,  expressing  that  "  a  man  who  makes 
such  a  bargain  is  not  entitled  to  any  great  glory  among 
diplomatists,"  is  all  that  I  can  call  to  mind  —  that  I  will 
not  arrest  the  course  of  your  feelings  here  and  now  by 
attempting  to  refute  that  "  sneer  "  out  of  the  history  of 
the  hour  and  scene.  "  Standing  here,"  he  said  in  April, 
1846,  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  to  which  he 
had  returned  —  "standing  here  to-day,  in  this  Senate, 
and  speaking  in  behalf  of  the  administration  of  which  I 
formed  a  part,  and  in  behalf  of  the  two  houses  of  Con- 
gress who  sustained  that  administration,  cordially  and  ef- 
*o'.+ively,  in  every  thing  relating  to  this  treaty,  I  am  will- 
ing to  appeal  to  the  public  men  of  the  age,  whether  in 
1842,  and  in  the  city  of  Washington,  something  was  not 
done  for  the  suppression  of  crime ;  for  the  true  exposition 
of  the  principles  of  public  layr ;  for  the  freedom  and  secu- 
rity of  commerce  on  the  ocean,  and  for  the  peace  of  the 
world ! "  In  that  forum  the  appeal  has  been  heard,  and 
the  praise  of  a  diplomatic  achievement  of  true  and  per- 
manent glory,  has  been  irreversibly  awarded  to  him. 
Beyond  that  forum  of  the  mere  "  public  men  of  the  age," 
by  the  larger  jurisdiction,  the  general  public,  the  same 
praise  has  been  awarded.  Sunt  hie  ctiam  sua  prmnia  lamli 
That  which  I  had  the  honor  to  say  in  the  Senate,  in  the 

session  of  1843,  in  a  discussion  concerning  this  treaty, 

6* 


(  • 


!lf 


i 


, 


54 


is  true,  and  applicable,  now  as  then.  "  Why  should  I,  or 
why  should  any  one,  assume  the  defence  of  a  treaty  here 
in  this  body,  which  but  just  now,  on  the  amplest  con- 
sideration, in  the  confidence  and  calmness  of  executive 
session,  was  approved  by  a  vote  so  decisive  ?  Sir,  the 
country  by  a  vote  far  more  decisive,  in  a  proportion  very 
far  beyond  thirty-nine  to  nine,  has  approved  your  ap- 
proval. Some  there  are,  some  few  —  I  speak  not  now 
of  any  member  of  this  senate  —  restless,  selfish,  reckless, 
"  the  cankers  of  a  calm  world  and  a  long  peace,"  pining 
with  thirst  of  notoriety,  slaves  to  their  hatred  of  Eng- 
land, to  whom  the  treaty  is  distasteful ;  to  whom  any 
treaty,  and  all  things  but  the  glare  and  clamor,  the  vain 
pomp  and  hollow  circumstance  of  war  —  all  but  these 
would  be  distasteful  and  dreary.  But  the  country  is 
with  you  in  this  act  of  wisdom  and  glory  j  its  intelli- 
gence ;  its  morality ;  its  labor ;  its  good  men ;  the 
thoughtful ;  the  philanthropic  ;  the  discreet ;  the  masses, 
are  with  you."  "It  confirms  the  purpose  of  the  wise 
and  good  of  both  nations  to  be  forever  at  peace  with 
one  another,  and  to  put  away  forever  all  war  from  the 
kindred  races :  war  the  most  ridiculous  of  blunders ;  the 
most  tremendous  of  crimes ;  the  most  comprehensive  of 
evils." 

And  now  to  him  who  in  the  solitude  of  his  library 
depreciates  this  act,  first,  because  there  was  no  danger 
of  a  war  with  England,  I  answer  that  according  io  the 
overwhelming  weight  of  that  kind  of  evidence  by 
•which  that  kind  of  question  must  be  tried,  that  is  by 
the  judgment  of  the  great  body  of  well-informed  public 


.  !i 


65 


I 


men  at  that  moment  in  Congress ;  in  the  Government ; 
in  diplomatic  situation  —  our  relations  to  that  power  had 
become  so  delicate,  and  so  urgent,  that  unless  soon  ad- 
justed by  negotiation  there  was  real  danger  of  war. 
Against  such  evidence  what  is  the  value  of  the  specula- 
tion of  a  private  person,  ten  years  afterwards,  in  the 
shade  of  his  general  studies,  whatever  his  sagacity  ? 
The  temper  of  the  border  population ;  the  tendencies  to 
disorder  in  Canada,  stimulated  by  sympathizers  on  our 
side  of  the  line ;  the  entrance  on  our  territory  of  a  Brit- 
ish armed  force  in  1837;  cutting  the  Caroline  out  of 
her  harbor,  and  sending  her  down  the  falls ;  the  arrest 
of  McLeod  in  1841,  a  British  subject,  composing  part  of 
that  force,  by  the  government  of  New  York,  and  the 
threat  to  hang  him,  which  a  person  high  in  office  in 
England,  declared,  in  a  letter  which  was  shown  to  me, 
would  raise  a  cry  for  war  from  "  whig,  radical,  and  tory  " 
which  no  ministry  could  resist ;  growing  irritation  caused 
by  the  search  of  our  vessels  under  color  of  suppressing 
the  slave-trade ;  the  long  controversy,  almost  as  old  as 
the  government,  about  the  boundary  line  —  so  conduct- 
ed as  to  have  at  last  convinced  each  disputant  that  the 
other  was  fraudulent  and  insincere  j  as  to  have  enlisted 
the  pride  of  States  ;  as  to  have  exasperated  and  agitated 
a  large  line  of  border ;  as  to  have  entered  finally  into 
the  tactics  of  political  parties,  and  the  schemes  of  ambi- 
tious men,  '-bidding,  out-racing  one  another  in  a  com- 
jjetition  of  clamor  and  vehemence ;  a  controversy  on 
which  England,  a  European  monarchy,  a  first  class  power, 
near  to  the  great  sources  of  the  opinion  of  the  world, 


D'fPi- 


1  f 


56 

by  her  press,  her  cliplomany,  and  her  universal  inter- 
co:n'se  had  taken  great  pains  to  persuade  Europe  that 
our  claim  was  groundless  and  unconscientious  —  all  these 
things  announced  to  near  observers  in  public  life  a  crisis 
at  hand  which  demanded  something  more  than  "any 
sensible  and  honest  man  "  to  encounter ;  assuring  some 
glory  to  him  who  should  triumph  over  it.  One  such 
observer  said :  "  Men  stood  facing  each  other  with  guns 
on  their  shoulders,  upon  opposite  sides  of  fordable  rivers, 
thirty  yards  wide.  The  discharge  of  a  single  musket 
would  have  brought  on  a  war  whose  fires  would  have 
encircled  the  globe." 

Is  this  act  disparaged  next  because  what  each  party 
had  for  sixty  years  claimed  as  the  true  line  of  the  old 
treaty  was  waived,  a  line  of  agreement  substituted,  and 
equivalents  given  and  taken,  for  gain  or  loss  ?  But  here- 
in you  will  see  only,  what  the  nation  has  seen,  the  bold- 
ness as  well  as  sagacity  of  Mr.  Webster.  When  the 
award  of  the  king  of  the  Netherlands,  proposing  a  line 
of  agreement,  was  offered  to  President  Jackson,  that 
strong  will  dared'  not  accept  it  in  face  of  the  party  poli- 
tics of  Maine  —  although  he  advised  to  offer  her  the 
value  of  a  million  of  dollars  to  procure  her  assent  to  an 
adjustment  which  his  own  mind  approved.  What  he 
dared  not  do,  inferred  some  peril  I  suppose.  Yet  the 
experience  of  twenty  years  j  of  sixty  years ;  should  have 
taught  all  men ;  had  taught  many  who  shrank  from  act- 
ing on  it,  that  the  Gordian  knot  must  be  cut,  not  un- 
loosed —  that  all  further  attempt  to  find  the  true  line 
must  be  abandoned  as  an  idle  and  a  perilous  diplomacy ; 


67 


oli- 
thc 
an 
he 
the 
liave 
act- 
un- 
line 
acy; 


and  that  a  boundary  must  bo  made  by  a  l)argain  worthy 
of  nations,  or  must  bo  traced  by  the  point  of  the  bayonet. 
The  merit  of  Mr.  Webster  is  first  that  ho  dared  to  open 
the  negotiation  on  this  basis.  I  say  the  boldness.  For 
appreciate  the  domestic  difficulties  which  attended  it. 
In  its  nature  it  proposed  to  give  up  something  which 
we  had  thought  our  own  for  half  a  century ;  to  code  of 
the  territory  of  more  than  one  State  ;  it  demanded  there- 
fore the  assent  of  those  states  by  formal  act,  committing 
the  S*  e  ^  tics  in  power  ui;  w,'vGcally;  it  was  to  be 
undertaken  not  in  the  administration  of  Munroc  —  elect- 
ed by  the  whole  people  —  not  in  the  administration  of 
Jackson  whose  vast  popularity  could  carry  any  thing, 
and  withstand  anything;  but  just  when  the  death  of 
President  Harrison  had  scattered  his  party ;  had  alien- 
ated hearts ;  had  severed  ties  and  dissolved  connections 
indispensable  to  the  strength  of  administration ;  creating 
a  loud  call  on  Mr.  Webster  to  leave  the  Cabinet  —  creat- 
ing almost  the  appearance  of  an  unwillingness  that  he 
should  contribute  to  its  glory  even  by  largest  service  to 
the  State. 

Yet  consider  finally  how  ho  surmounted  every  diffi- 
culty. I  will  not  say  with  Lord  Palmerston,  in  parlia- 
ment, that  there  was  "  nobody  in  England  who  did  not 
admit  it  a  very  bad  treaty  for  England."  But  I  may  re- 
peat what  I  said  on  it  in  the  Senate  in  1843.  "And 
now  what  does  the  world  see  ?  An  adjustment  con- 
cluded by  a  special  minister  at  Washington,  by  whirli 
four  fifths  of  the  value  of  the  whole  subject  in  contro- 
versy, is  left  to  you  as  your  own  j  and  by  which,  for  that 


•  ) 


58 


:  1 


one  fifth  whicli  England  desires  to  possess,  she  pays  you 
over  and  over,  in  national  equivalents,  imperial  equiva- 
lents, such  as  a  nation  may  give,  such  as  a  nation  may 
accept,  satisfactory  to  your  interests,  soothing  to  your 
honor  —  the  navigation  of  the  St.  John  —  a  concession 
the  value  of  which  nobody  disputes,  a  concession  not  to 
Maine  alone,  but  to  the  whole  country,  to  commerce,  to 
navigation,  as  far  as  winds  blow  or  waters  roll  —  an 
equivalent  of  inappreciable  value,  opening  an  ample  path 
to  the  sea,  an  equivalent  in  part  for  what  she  receives 
of  the  territory  in  dispute  —  a  hundred  thousand  acres 
in  New  Hampshire ;  fifty  thousand  acres  in  Vermont 
and  New  York ;  the  point  of  land  commanding  the 
great  military  way  to  and  from  Canada  by  Lake  Cham- 
plain  ;  the  fair  and  fertile  island  of  St.  George  ;  the  sur- 
render of  a  pertinacious  pretension  to  four  millions  of 
acres  westward  of  Lake  Superior.  Sir,  I  will  not  say 
that  this  adjustment  admits,  or  was  designed  to  admit 
that  our  title  to  the  whole  territory  in  controversy  was 
perfect  and  indisputable.  I  will  not  do  so  much  in- 
justice to  the  accomplished  and  excellent  person  who 
represented  the  moderation  and  the  good  sense  of  the 
English  government  and  people  in  this  negotiation.  I 
cannot  adopt  even  for  the  defence  of  a  treaty  which 
I  so  much  approve,  the  language  of  a  writer  in  the 
London  Morning  Chronicle  of  September  last,  who  has 
been  said  to  be  Lord  Palmerston,  which  over  and  over 
asserts  —  substantially  as  his  Lordship  certainly  did  in 
parliament,  that  the  adjustment  "  virtually  acknowledges 
the  American  claim  to  the  whole  of  the  disputed  terri- 


59 


tory,"  and  that  "  it  gives  England  no  sliare  at  all ;  abso- 
lutely none ;  for  the  capitulation  virtually  and  practi- 
cally yields  up  the  whole  territory  to  the  United  States, 
and  then  brings  back  a  small  part  of  it  in  exchange  for 
the  right  of  navigating  the  St.  John."  I  will  not  say 
this.  But  I  say  first,  that  by  concession  of  everybody 
it  is  a  better  treaty  than  the  administration  of  President 
Jackson  would  have  most  eagerly  concluded,  if  by  the 
offer  of  a  million  and  a  quarter  acres  of  land  they  could 
have  procured  the  assent  of  Maine  to  it.  That  treaty  she 
rejected ;  this  she  accepts;  and  I  disparage  nobody  when  I 
maintain  that  on  all  parts,  and  all  aspects,  of  this  ques- 
tion, national  or  state,  military  or  industrial,  her  opinion 
is  worth  that  of  the  whole  country  beside.  I  say  next 
that  the  treaty  admits  the  substantial  justice  of  your 
general  claim.  It  admits  that  in  its  utmost  extent  it 
w^as  plausible,  formidable,  and  made  in  pure  good  faith. 
It  admits  before  the  nations  that  we  have  not  been  rapa- 
cious ;  have  not  made  false  clamor  ;  that  we  have 
asserted  our  own,  and  obtained  our  own.  Adjudging  to 
you  the  possession  of  four  fifths  indisputably,  she  gives  you 
for  the  one  fifth  which  you  concede,  equivalents,  giveu 
as  equwalcnts,  co  nomine,  on  purpose  so  soothe  and  save  the 
point  of  honor  ;  whose  intrinsical  and  comparative  value 
is  such  that  you  may  accept  them  as  equivalents  without 
reproach  to  your  judgment,  or  your  firmness,  or  your 
good  faith ;  whose  intrinsical  and  comparative  value, 
tried  by  the  maxims,  weighed  in  the  scales  of  imperial 
traffic,  make  them  a  compensation  over  and  over  agair 
for  all  we  concede." 


V 

I 


00 


if 


But  I  linger  too  long  upon  his  public  lilb,  and  upon  this 
one  of  its  great  nets.  With  what  profound  conviction 
of  all  the  (lilhculties  Avhich  heset  it ;  nith  ^vhat  anxieties 
for  the  issue,  hope  and  fear  alternately  preponderating, 
he  entered  on  that  extreme  trial  of  capacity,  and  good 
fortune,  and  carried  it  through,  I  shall  not  soon  forget. 
As  if  it  were  last  night,  I  recall  the  time  when,  iifter  the 
»Senate  had  ratified  it  in  an  evening  executive  session,  by 
a  vote  of  thiit^-.iine  to  nine,  I  ])ersonally  carried  to  hiin 
the  result,  at  his  own  house,  and  in  presence  of  his 
wife.  Then,  indeed,  the  measure  of  his  glory  and  hap- 
piness seeined  full.  In  the  exuberant  language  of 
Burke,  "  I  stood  near  him,  and  his  face,  to  use  the  ex- 
pression of  the  Scripture  of  the  first  martyr,  was  as  if  it 
had  been  the  face  of  an  angel.  '  Hope  elevated,  and 
joy-l)rightencd  his  crest.'  I  do  not  know  how  ottors 
feel,  but  if  I  had  stood  in  that  situation,  I  would  not 
have  exchanged  it  for  all  that  kings  or  people  could 
bestow." 

Such  eminence  and  such  hold  on  the  public  mind  as 
he  attained  demands  extraordinarv  general  intellectual 
power,  ade(piate  mental  culture,  an  impressive,  attract- 
ive, energetic  and  great  character,  and  extraordinary 
specific  power  also  of  influencing  the  convietion.s  and 
actions  of  others  by  speech.     These  all  he  had. 

That  in  the  quality  of  pure  and  sheer  power  of  intel- 
lect he  was  of  the  first  class  of  men,  is,  I  think,  the  uni- 
versal judgment  of  all  who  have  personally  witnessed 
many  of  his  higher  displays,  and  of  all  who  without 
that  opportunity  have  studied  his  life  in  its  actions  and 


61 


iiifliieneos,  and  .stiuliLHl  his  mind  in  its  rerorilod  tlioii<j;lits. 
Sometiines  it  has  iseLMiiod  to  iiic  that  to  enal)le  ono  to 
appreciate  with  accuracy,  as  a  ])sycholo;:^ical  sj)ociihition, 
the  intrinsic  and  ubsohite  vohnne  and  texture  of  that 
brain  ;  the  real  rate  and  measure  of  those  abiHties  ;  it  was 
better  not  to  see  or  hear  him,  unless  you  couhl  see  or 
hear  him  frequently,  and  in  various  modes  of  exhibition; 
for  undoubtedly  there  was  something  in  his  countenance 
and  bearing  so  expressive  of  conmiand  ;  something  even 
in  his  conversational  language  when  saying  parva  huih- 
mlsse  ct  modica  U-mjwafe,  so  exquisitely  plausible,  em- 
bodying^ the  likeness  at  least  of  a  rich  truth,  the  forms 
at  least  of  a  large  generalization,  in  an  epithet;  an  anti- 
thesis: a  poiiited  phrase;  a  broad  and  peremptory  thesis 
—  and  something  in  his  grander  forth-putting  when 
ro  ed  by  a  great  subject  or  occasion  exciting  his  reason 
and  touching  his  moral  sentiments  and  his  heart,  so  dilli- 
cult  to  ^e  resisted,  approaching  so  near,  going  so  far  bc- 
yc"'1  higher  style  of  man,  that  although  it  left  you  a 
vei^  ,.ood  witness  of  his  power  of  influencing  others,  you 
were  not  in  the  best  condition,  immediately,  to  pro- 
nounce o"  ^lie  quality,  or  the  source  of  the  influence. 
You  saw  tlie  flash  and  heard  the  peal ;  and  felt  the  ad- 
miration and  fear ;  but  from  wdiat  region  it  was  launched, 
and  by  what  divinity,  and  from  what  Olympian  seat, 
you  CDuld  not  certainly  yet  tell.  To  do  that,  you  must, 
if  you  saw  iiim  at  all,  see  him  many  times ;  compare 
m  with  himself,  and  with  others ;  follow  his  dazzling 
Career  from  his  fother's  house  ;  observe  from  what  com- 
petitors  he   won    those    laurels ;   study  his   discourses, 

6 


C'2 


li 


li 


1 


Htiuly  tlieiu  l)y  the  sido  ol'  tliosc  of  other  great  men  of 
tliis  country  and  time,  and  of  other  comitries  and  times, 
conspicuous  in  the  same  fields  of  mental  achievement ; 
look  througii  the  crystal  water  of  the  style  down  to  the 
golden  sands  of  the  thought ;  analyze  and  contrast  intel- 
lectual power  somewhat ;  consider  what  kind,  and  what 
quantity  of  it  has  been  held  by  students  of  mind  need- 
ful in  order  to  great  eminence  in  the  higher  mathe- 
matics, or   metaphysics,  or  reason  of  the   law  :    what 
capacity  to  analyze,  through  and  through,  to  the  pri- 
mordial elements  of  the  truths  of  that  science  ;  yet  what 
wisdom  and  sobriety,  in  order  to  control  the  wantonness 
and  shun  the  absurdities  of  a  mere  scholastic  logic,  Ijy 
systematizing  ideas,  and  combining  them,  and  repressing 
one  by  another,  thus  producing,  not  a  collection  of  in- 
tense and  conflicting  paradoxes,  but  a  code  —  scientifi- 
cally coherent,  and  practically  useful,  —  consider  what 
description  and  what  quantity  of  mind  have  been  held 
needful  by  students  of  mind  in  order  to  conspicuous 
eminence,  long  maintained,  in  statesmanship ;  that  great 
practical  science,  that  great  jihilosophical  art  —  whose 
ends  are  the  existence,  happiness  and  honor  of  a  nation: 
whose  truths  are  to  be  drawn  from  the  widest  survey  of 
man ;  of  social  man :  of  the  particular  race,  and  parti- 
cular community  for  which  a  government  is  to  be  made, 
or  kept,  or  a  policy  to  be  provided ;  "  philosophy  in  ac- 
tion," demanding  at  once,  or  affording  place  for,  the  high- 
est si)eculative  genius,  and  the  most  skilful  conduct  of 
men,  and  of  affairs ;  and,  finally,  consider  what  degree 
and  kind  of  mental  power  has  been  found  to  be  required 


68 


igh- 


m  order  to  inllucnce  the  reason  of  an  audience  and  a 
nation  by  Hpcecli  —  not  nia^neti/in<r  the  mere  nervous 
or  emotional  nature  by  an  ellbrt  of  tliat  nature  —  but 
operating  on  reason  by  reason  —  a  great  reputation  in 
forensic  and  deliberative  eloquence,  maintained  and  ad- 
vancing for  a  lifetime  —  it  \»  thus  that  "vve  come  to  be 
sure  that  his  intellectual  power  -was  as  real  and  as  uni- 
form, as  its  very  happiest  particular  display  had  been 
imposing  and  remarkable. 

It  Avas  not  (piite  so  easy  to  analyze  thr^t  power,  to 
compare  or  contrast  it  with  tht  of  other  me  ital  celebri- 
ties, and  show  how  it  diflered  or  resembled,  as  it  was  to 
discern  its  existence. 

Whether,  for  example,  he  would  have  c  -  celled  as 
much  in  other  fields  of  exertion  —  in  specuiiiive  philo- 
sophy, for  example,  in  any  of  its  '^io^-artments — ;•  a 
problem  impossible  to  determine  ana  needless  to  move. 
To  me  it  seems  quite  clear  that  the  whole  wealth  of  his 
powers,  his  whole  emotional  nature,  his  eloquent  feeling, 
his  matchless  capacity  to  affect  others'  conduct  by  affect- 
ing their  practical  judgments,  could  not  have  been 
known,  could  not  have  been  poured  forth  in  a  stream 
so  rich  and  strong  and  full,  could  not  have  so  reacted 
on,  and  aided  and  wingeJ'  +he  mighty  intelligence,  in 
any  other  walk  of  mind,  or  life,  thnn  that  he  chose  — 
that  in  any  other  there  must  have  been  some  disjoining 
of  qualities  which  God  had  united  —  some  divorce  of 
pure  intellect  from  the  helps  or  hindrances  or  compan- 
ionship of  common  sense  and  beautiful  genius ;  and  that 
in  any  field  of  speculative  ideas  but  half  of  him,  or  part 


u, 


64 


of  him,  could  have  found  its  sphere.     What  that  part 
might  have  been  or  done,  it  is  vain  to  inquire. 

I  have  been  told  that  the  assertion  has  been  hazarded 
that  he  "  was  great  in  understanding;  deficient  in  the  large 
reason  ; "  and  to  prove  this  distinction  he  is  compared  dis- 
advantageously,  with  "  Socrates ;  Aristotle  ;  Plato ;  Leib- 
nitz ;  Newton ;  and  Descartes."  If  this  means  ihat  he 
did  not  devote  his  mind,  such  as  it  was,  to  their  specu- 
lations, it  is  true ;  but  that  would  not  prove  that  he  had 
not  as  much  "  higher  reason."  Where  was  Bacon's  higher 
reason  when  he  was  composing  his  reading  on  the  Statute 
of  Uses  ?  Had  lie  lost  it  ?  or  was  he  only  not  employ- 
ing it  ?  or  was  he  employing  it  on  an  investigation  of 
law  ?  If  it  means  that  he  had  not  as  much  aljsolute  in- 
tellectual power  as  they,  or  could  not,  in  their  depart- 
ments, have  done  what  they  did,  it  may  be  dismissed  as 
a,  dogma  incapable  of  proof,  and  incapable  of  refuta- 
tion ;  inefiectual  as  a  disparagement ;  unphilosophical 
as  a  comparison. 

It  is  too  common  with  those  who  come  from  the  rev- 
eries of  a  cloistered  speculation,  to  judge  a  practical  life ; 
to  say  of  him,  and  such  as  he,  that  they  "  do  not  enlarge 
universal  law,  and  first  principles  ;  and  philosophical 
ideas  ;  "  that "  they  add  no  new  maxim  formed  by  induc- 
tion out  of  human  history  and  old  thought."  In  this 
there  is  some  truth ;  and  yet  it  totally  fails  to  prove 
that  they  do  not  possess  all  the  intellectual  power,  and 
all  the  specific  form  of  intellectual  power  required  for 
such  a  description  of  achievement ;  and  it  totally  ftiils, 
too,  to  prove  that  they  do  not  use  it  quite  as  truly  to 


65 


"  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  bettering  of  man's  estate." 
"Whether  they  posses  such  power  or  not,  the  evidence 
does  not  disprove  ;  and  it  is  a  pedantic  dogmatism,  if  it 
is  not  a  malignant  dogmatism,  which,  from  such  evidence, 
pronounces  that  they  do  not ;  but  it  is  doubtless  so,  that 
by  an  original  bias ;  by  accidental  circumstances  or  deli- 
berate choice,  he  determined  early  to  devote  himself  to 
a  practical  and  great  duty,  and  that  was  to  uphold  a 
recent,  delicate,  and  complex  political  system,  which  his 
studies,  his  sagacity,  taught  him,  as  Solon  learned,  was 
the  best  the  people  could  bear ;  to  uphold  it ;  to  adapt 
its  essential  principles  and  its  actual  organism  to  the 
great  changes  of  his  time ;  the  enlarging  territory ;  en- 
larging numbers;  sharper  antagonisms;  mightier  pas- 
sions; a  new  nationality;  and  under  it,  and  by  means 
of  it,  and  by  a  steady  government,  a  wise  policy  of  busi- 
ness, a  temperate  conduct  of  foreign  relations,  to  enable 
a  people  to  develop  their  resources,  and  fulfil  their 
mission.  This  he  selected  as  his  work  on  earth;  this 
his  task ;  this,  if  well  done,  his  consolation,  his  joy,  his 
triumph !  To  this,  call  it,  in  comparison  with  the  medi- 
tations of  philosophy,  humble  or  high,  he  brought  all 
the  vast  gifts  of  intellect,  whatever  they  were,  where- 
with God  had  enriched  him.  And  now,  do  they  infer 
that,  because  he  selected  such  a  work  to  do  he  could  not 
have  possessed  the  higher  form  of  intellectual  power ;  or 
do  they  say  that,  because  having  selected  it,  he  performed 
it  with  a  masterly  and  uniform  sagacity,  and  prudence, 
and  good  sense ;  using  ever  the  appropriate  means  to  the 

selected  end ;  that  therefore  he  could  not  have  possessed 

6* 


'A 

rit 


.1 


.^! 


66 


' 


the  higher  form  of  intellectual  power  ?  Because  all  his 
life  long,  he  recognized  that  his  vocation  was  that  of 
a  statesman  and  a  jurist,  not  that  of  a  thinker  and 
dreamer  in  the  shade,  still  less  of  a  general  agitator ;  that 
his  duties  connected  themselves  mainly  with  an  existing 
stupendous  political  order  of  things,  to  be  kept  —  to  be 
adapted  with  all  possible  civil  discretion  and  temper  to 
the  growth  of  the  nation  —  but  by  no  means  to  be  ex- 
changed for  any  quantity  of  amorphous  matter  in  the 
form  of  "universal  law"  or  new  maxims  and  great  ideas 
born  since  the  last  change  of  the  moon  —  because  he 
quite  ha])itually  spoke  the  language  of  the  Constitution 
and  the  law,  not  the  phraseology  of  a  new  philosophy ; 
confining  himself  very  much  to  inculcating  historical,  tra- 
ditional, and  indispensable  maxims — neutrality;  justice; 
good  faith  ;  observance  of  fundamental  compacts  of  Union 
and  the  like  —  because  it  was  America  —  our  America  — 
he  sought  to  preserve,  and  to  set  forward  to  her  glory  — 
not  so  much  an  abstract  conception  of  humanity ;  be- 
cause he  could  combine  many  ideas ;  many  elements ; 
many  antagonisms ;  in  a  harmonious,  and  noble  practi- 
cal politics,  instead  of  fastening  on  one  only,  and  —  that 
sure  sign  of  small  or  perverted  ability  —  aggravating  it 
to  disease  and  falsehood  —  is  it  therefore  inferred  that 
he  had  not  the  larger  form  of  intellectual  power  ? 

And  this  power  was  not  oppressed,  but  aided  and 
accomplished  by  exercise  the  most  constant,  the  most 
severe,  the  most  stimulant,  and  by  a  force  of  will  as 
remarkable  as  his  genius,  and  by  adequate  mental  and 
tasteful  culture.  How  much  the  eminent  greatness 
it  reached  is  due  to  the  various  and  lofty  competition 


G* 


^ 


to  which  he  brought,  if  he  could,  the  moi<t  carclul 
preparation  —  competition  with  adversaries  ciua  quihus 
ccrtare  crat  glonosius,  quam  oiunino  aJtrrsarm  non  hahcrc, 
cum  pnvscrtlm  wni  modo,  numjumn  ait  aul  iUnnDn  ah  ipm 
cnrsus  wij)e(Ii/us,  ant  ah  ipnis  situs,  scd  vonlra  scniprr  kKvi' 
ah  altcro  ailjutus,  ct  comninuicando,  ct  uomouln,  el  fnvciah, 
you  may  well  appreciate. 

I  claim  much,  too,  under  the  name  of  mere  mental 
culture.  Remark  his  style.  I  allow  its  full  weight  to 
the  Iloratian  maxim,  scrihcmli  rccte  supcrc  cd  d  princi- 
2mm  ct  foils,  and  I  admit  that  he  had  deep  and  ex- 
quisite judgment,  largely  of  the  gift  of  God.  But 
such  a  style  as  his  is  due  also  to  art,  to  practice  —  in 
the  matter  of  style,  incessant,  to  great  examples  of 
fine  writing  turned  by  the  nightly  and  the  daily  hand ; 
to  CicCxO,  through  whose  pellucid  deep  seas  the  pearl 
shows  distinct,  and  large  and  near,  as  if  within  the 
arm's  reach ;  to  Virgil,  whose  magic  of  words,  whof<e 
exquisite  structure  and  "  rich  economy  of  expression," 
no  other  writer  ever  equalled ;  to  our  English  Bible, 
and  especially  to  the  prophetical  writings,  and  of  these 
especially  to  Ezekiel  —  of  some  of  whose  peculiarities, 
and  among  them  that  of  the  repetition  of  single  words, 
or  phrases  for  emphasis  and  impression,  a  friend  has 
called  my  attention  to  some  very  striking  illustrations ; 
to  Shakespeare,  of  the  style  of  whose  comic  dialogue 
we  may,  in  the  language  of  the  great  critic,  assert  '•  that 
it  is  that  which  in  the  Englisii  nation  is  never  to 
become  obsolete,  a  certain  mode  of  phraseology  so 
consonant  and  congenial  to   analogy,  to  principles  of 


!l 


ri 


the  language,  as  to  remain  settled  and  unaltered  — 
a  style  above  grossncss,  below  modish  and  pedantic 
forms  of  speech,  where  propriety  resides ; "  to  Addison, 
whom  Johnson,  Mackintosh,  and  Macaulay,  concur  to 
put  at  the  head  of  all  fine  writers,  for  the  amenity, 
delicacy,  and  unostentatious  elegance  of  his  English; 
to  Pope,  polished,  condensed,  sententious ;  to  Johnson 
and  Burke,  in  whom  all  the  affluence  and  all  the 
energy  of  our  tongue  in  both  its  great  elements  of 
Saxon  and  Latin  might  be  exemplified ;  to  the  study 
and  comparison,  but  not  the  copying  of  authors  such 
as  these ;  to  habits  of  writing,  and  speaking,  and  con- 
versing, on  the  capital  theory  of  always  doing  his 
best  —  thus  somewhat,  I  think,  was  acquired  that  re- 
markable production,  "  the  last  work  of  combined  study 
and  genius,"  his  rich,  clear,  correct,  hannonious,  and 
weighty  style  of  prose. 

Beyond  these  studies  and  exercises  of  taste,  he  had 
read  variously  and  judiciously.  If  any  public  man,  or 
any  man,  had  more  thoroughly  mastered  British  con- 
stitutional and  general  history,  or  the  history  of  Brit- 
ish legislation,  or  could  deduce  the  progress,  eras, 
causes,  and  hindrances  of  British  liberty  in  more  prompt, 
exact,  and  copious  detail,  or  had  in  his  memory,  at  any 
given  moment,  a  more  ample  political  biography,  or 
political  literature,  I  do  not  know  him.  His  library  of 
English  history,  and  of  all  history,  was  always  rich,  se- 
lect, and  catholic,  and  I  well  recollect  hearing  him,  in 
1819,  while  attending  a  commencement  of  this  College, 
at  an  evening  party  sketch,  with  great  emphasis  and 


69 


had 


interest  of  manner,  the  merits  of  George  Buchanan,  the 
historian  of  Scotland  —  his  latinity  and  eloquence  al- 
most equal  to  Livy's,  his  love  of  liberty  and  his  genius 
greater,  and  his  title  to  credit  not  much  worse.  Ameri- 
can history  and  American  political  literature  lie  had  by 
heart.  The  long  series  of  influciices  that  trained  us  for 
representative  and  free  government ;  that  other  series 
of  influences  which  moulded  us  into  a  united  govern- 
ment —  the  colonial  era  —  the  age  of  controversy  be- 
fore the  revolution ;  every  scene  and  every  person  in 
that  great  tragic  action  —  the  age  of  controversy  fol- 
lowing the  revolution,  and  preceding  the  Constitution, 
unlike  the  earlier,  in  which  we  divided  ^mong  ourselves 
on  the  greatest  questions  which  can  engage  the  mind  of 
America  —  the  questions  of  the  existence  of  a  national 
government,  of  the  continued  existence  of  the  State 
governments,  on  the  partition  of  powers,  on  the  umpi- 
rage of  disputes  between  them  —  a  controversy  on  which 
the  destiny  of  the  New  World  was  staked ;  every  problem, 
which  has  successively  engaged  our  politics,  and  every 
name  which  has  figured  in  them,  the  whole  stream  of 
our  time  was  open,  clear,  and  present  ever  to  his  eye. 

I  think,  too,  that,  though  not  a  frequent  and  amlji- 
tious  citer  of  authorities,  he  had  read,  in  the  course  of 
the  study  of  his  profession  or  politics,  and  had  meditated 
all  the  great  writers  and  thinkers  by  whom  the  princi- 
ples of  republican  government,  and  all  free  govern- 
ments, are  most  authoritatively  expounded.  Aristotle, 
Cicero,  Machiavel,  one  of  whose  discourses  on  Livy, 
maintains  in  so  masterly  an  argument,  how  much  wiser 


70 


and  more  constant  are  the  people  than  the  prince  —  a 
doctrine  of  liberty  consolatory  and  full  of  joy,  Harring- 
ton, Milton,  Sidney,  Locke,  I  know  he  had  read  and 
weighed. 

Other  classes  of  information  there  were,  partly  ob- 
tained from  books,  partly  from  observation  —  to  some 
extent  referable  to  his  two  main  employments  of  poli- 
tics and  law — by  which  he  was  distinguished  remarkably. 
Thus,  nobody  but  was  struck  with  his  knowledge  of 
civil  and  physical  geography,  and  to  a  less  extent  of 
geology  and  races ;  of  all  the  great  routes  and  marts  of 
our  foreign,  coastwise,  and  interior  commerce  ;  the  sub- 
jects which  it  exchanges,  the  whole  circle  of  industry  it 
comprehends  and  passes  around ;  the  kinds  of  our  me- 
chanical and  manufacturing  productions,  and  their  re- 
lations to  all  labor,  and  life ;  the  history,  theories,  and 
practice  of  agriculture,  our  own  and  that  of  other  coun- 
tries, and  its  relations  to  government,  liberty,  happiness 
and  the  character  of  nations.  This  kind  of  information 
enriched  and  assisted  all  his  public  efforts  j  but  to  appre- 
ciate the  variety  and  accuracy  of  his  knowledge,  and 
even  the  true  compass  of  his  mind,  you  must  have  had 
some  familiarity  with  his  friendly  written  correspon- 
dence, and  you  must  have  conversed  with  him,  with 
some  degree  of  freedom.  There,  more  than  in  senato- 
rial or  forensic  debate,  gleamed  the  true  riches  of  his 
genius,  as  well  as  the  goodness  of  his  large  heart,  and 
the  kindness  of  his  noble  nature.  There,  with  no 
longer  a  great  part  to  discharge,  no  longer  compelled  to 
weigh   and   measure  propositions,  to   tread   the   dizzy 


71 


7 


a 


no 
Id  to 
izzy 


heights  which  part  the  antagonisms  of  the  Constitution, 
to  put  aside  aUusions  and  ilhistrations,  which  crowded 
on  his  mind  in  action,  but  which  the  dignity  of  a  puljlic 
appearance  had  to  reject  —  in  the  confidence  of  hospi- 
taUty,  which  ever  he  dispensed  as  a  prince  who   also 
was  a  friend — r  his  memory,  one  of  his  most  extraordi- 
nary ftxculties,  quite  in  proportion  to  all  the  rest,  swept 
free  over  the  readings  and  labors  of  more  than  half  a 
century ;  and    then   allusions,  direct  and  ready  quota- 
tions, a  passing,  mature  criticism,  sometimes  only  a  recol- 
lection of  the  mere  emotions  which  a  glorious  passage 
or  interesting  event  had  once  excited,  darkening  for  a 
moment  the  face,  and  fillino;  the  eye — often  an  instruct- 
ive   exposition  of  a   current   maxim  of  philosophy  or 
politics,  the  history  of  an  invention,  the  recital  of  some 
incident  casting?  a  new  lio;ht  on  some  transaction  or  some 
institution  —  this  flow  of  unstudied  conversation,  quite 
as  remarkable  as  any  other  exhibition  of  his  mind,  bet- 
ter than  any  other,  perhaps,  at  once  opened  an  unex- 
pected glimpse  of  his  various  accquirements,  and  gave 
you  to   experience   delightedly  that   the  "  mild   senti- 
ments have   their   eloquence   as   well   as   the   stormy 
passions." 

There  must  be  added  next  the  element  of  an  impres- 
dive  character,  inspiring  regard,  trust,  and  admiration, 
not  unmingled  with  love.  It  had,  I  think,  intrinsically 
a  charm  such  as  belongs  only  to  a  good,  noble,  and 
beautiful  nature.  In  its  combination  with  so  much 
fame,  so  much  force  of  will,  and  so  much  intellect,  it 
filled  and  fascinated  the  imafjination  and  heart.    It  was 


72 


jiflcctioniitu  in  cliiklhootl  and  youth,  and  it  was  more 
than  ever  so  in  the  few  last  months  of  his  long  life.  It 
hi  ihe  universal  testimony  that  he  gave  to  his  parents, 
in  largest  measure,  honor,  love,  oljodicnce  ;  that  he 
eagerly  ajjpropriated  the  first  means  which  he  could 
couuuand  to  relieve  the  father  from  the  deljts  contracted 
to  educate  his  brother  and  himself — that  he  selected 
his  first  i)lace  of  professional  practice  that  he  might 
soothe  the  coming  on  of  his  old  age  —  that  all  through 
life  he  neglected  no  occasion,  sometimes  when  leaning  on 
the  arm  of  a  friend,  alone,  with  faltering  voice,  sometimes 
in  the  presence  of  great  assemblies,  where  the  tide  of 
general  emotion  made  it  graceful,  to  express  his"aflec- 
tionatc  veneration  of  him  who  reared  and  defended  the 
log  cabin  in  which  his  elder  brothers  and  sisters  were 
born,  against  savage  violence  and  destruction ;  cherished 
all  the  domestic  virtues  beneath  its  roof,  and  through 
the  (ire  and  blood  of  some  years  of  revolutionary  war, 
shiaiik  fiom  no  danger,  no  toil,  no  sacrifice,  to  serve  his 
country,  and  to  raise  his  children  to  a  condition  better 
than  his  own." 

Ivjually  Ijeautiful  was  his  love  of  all  his  kindred,  and 
of  all  his  friends.  When  I  hear  him  accused  of  selfish- 
ness, and  a  cold,  bad  nature,  I  recall  him  lying  sleepless 
all  night,  not  without  tears  of  boyhood,  conferring  with 
E/ekiel  how  the  darling  desire  of  both  hearts  should  be 
compassed,  and  he  too  admitted  to  the  precious  privi- 
leges of  education  ;  courageously  pleading  the  cause  of 
both  brothers  in  the  morning ;  prevailing  by  the  wise 
and  discerning  aflection  of  the  mother ;  suspending  his 


73 


stiitlioH  of  the  law,  and  registering  deeds  and  teaching 
school  to  earn  the  means,  for  both,  of  availing  themselves 
of  the  oi)portunity  which  the  parental  self-sacrifice  had 
placed  within  their  reach  —  loving  him  through  life, 
mourning  him  uhen  dead,  with  a  love  and  a  sorrow 
very  wonderful  —  j)assing  the  sorrow  of  woman  ;  I  re- 
call the  husband,  the  father  of  the  living  and  o  the 
early  departed,  the  friepd,  the  counsellor  of  many  »ars, 
and  my  heart  grows  too  full  and  liquid  for  the  refutation 
of  words. 

His  aflectionatc  nature,  craving  ever  friendship,  as 
well  as  the  presence  of  kindred  blood,  diffused  itself 
through  all  his  private  life,  gave  sincerity  to  all  his  hos- 
pitalities, kindness  to  his  eye,  warmth  to  the  pressure  of 
his  hand  ;  made  his  greatness  and  genius  mibend  them- 
selves to  the  playfulness  of  childhood,  flowed  out  in 
graceful  memories  indulged  of  the  past  or  the  dead,  of 
mcidents  when  life  was  young  and  promised  to  be  happy 
—  gave  generous  sketches  of  his  rivals  —  the  high  con- 
tention now  hidden  by  the  handful  of  earth  —  hours 
passed  fifty  years  ago  with  great  authors,  recalled  for 
the  vernal  emotions  which  then  they  made  to  live 
and  revel  in  the  soul.  And  from  these  conversations 
of  friendship,  no  man  —  no  man,  old  or  young  —  went 
away  to  remember  one  word  of  profaneness,  one  allusion- 
of  indelicacy,  one  impure  thought,  one  unbelieving 
suggestion,  one  doubt  cast  on  the  reality  of  virtue,  of 
patriotism,  of  enthusiasm,  of  the  progress  of  man  — 
one  doubt  cast  on  righteousness,  or  temperance,  or 
judgment  to  come. 

7 


1 


r  t 


I 
I  1 


74 

Kvery  one  of  his  tastes  and  rocreations  announced 
the  same  type  of  character.  His  love  of  agriculture, 
oi'  s|H)rts  in  the  open  air,  of  the  outward  >vorld  in 
stjirlight  and  storms,  and  sea  and  boundless  wilderness 
—  ])artly  a  result  of  the  inlluences  of  the  lirst  fourteen 
years  of  his  life,  perpetuated  like  its  other  aflections 
and  its  other  lessons  of  a  mother's  love,  the  i)salms, 
the  Bible,  the  stories  of  the  \vars  —  pa'tly  the  return 
of  an  unsophisticated  and  healthful  nature,  tiring,  for 
a  space,  of  the  idle  business  of  political  life,  its  dis- 
tinctions, its  artilicialities,  to  employments,  to  sensations 
which  interest  without  agitating  the  universal  race 
alike,  as  Cod  has  framed  itj  in  which  one  feels  himself 
only  a  man,  fashioned  from  the  earth,  set  to  till  it, 
appointed  to  return  to  it,  yet  made  in  the  image  of  his 
Maker,  and  with  a  spirit  that  shall  not  die  —  all  dis- 
played a  man  whom  the  most  various  intercourse 
with  the  world,  the  longest  career  of  strife  and  honors, 
the  consciousness  of  intellectual  supremacy,  the  com- 
ing in  of  a  wide  fame,  constantly  enlarging,  left  as  he 
Avas  at  first,  natural,  simple,  manly,  genial,  kind. 

You  will  all  concur,  1  think,  with  a  learned  friend  who 
thus  calls  my  attention  to  the  resemblance  of  his  char- 
acter, in  some  of  these  particulars,  to  that  of  Walter 
Scott. 

"  Nature  endowed  both  with  athletic  frames,  and  a 
noble  presence ;  both  passionately  loved  rural  life,  its 
labors,  and  sports  j  possessed  a  manly  simplicit}  free 
from  all  affectation,  genial  and  social  tastes,  full  minds, 
and   happy  elocution  j   both  stamped  themselves  with 


75 


indolihle  mark>^  upon  the  nfro  in  which  thoy  lived ; 
hoth  were  laborious  and  uhvuys  with  high  nnd  virtuouH 
aims,  ardent  in  patriotism,  overflowinf;  with  love  of 
M<indred  ))lood/  and,  above  all,  frank  and  unostentatious 
Christians." 

I  have  learned  by  evidence  the  most  direct  and 
satisfactory,  that  in  the  last  months  of  his  life,  the 
whole  afTectionateness  of  his  nature  ;  his  consideration 
of  others;  his  gentleness  his  desire  to  make  them 
happy  and  to  see  them  happy,  seemed  to  come  out  in 
more  and  more  beautiful  and  habitual  expression  than 
ever  l)efore.  The  long  day's  public  tasks  were  felt  to 
be  done;  the  cares,  the  uncertainties,  the  mental  con- 
flicts of  high  place,  were  ended ;  and  he  canu^  homo 
to  recover  himself  for  the  few  years  which  he  might 
still  expect  would  be  his  before  he  should  go  hence 
to  be  here  no  more.  And  there,  I  am  assured  and 
fully  believe,  no  mibecoming  regrets  pursued  him ;  no 
discontent,  as  for  injustice  suffered  or  expectations 
miful filled ;  no  self-reproach  for  any  thing  done  or 
any  thing  omitted  by  himself;  no  irritation,  no  peevish- 
ness unworthy  of  his  noble  nature ;  but  instead,  love 
and  hope  for  his  country,  when  she  became  the  sub- 
ject of  conversation ;  and  for  all  around  him,  the 
dearest  and  the  most  indifferent,  for  all  breathing  things 
about  him,  the  overflow  of  the  kindest  heart  growing 
in  gentleness  and  benevolence ;  paternal,  patriarchal 
affections,  seeming  to  become  more  natural,  warm,  and 
communicative  every  hour.  Softer  and  yet  brighter 
grew  the  tints   on  the  sky  of  parting   dayj  and  the 


7C 


■ 


last  linj^'orinf^  rnyn,  moro  even  than  tii>  |  lories  of  noon, 
annoimcod  how  divine  was  tlio  source  ir.'  which  they 
PiocchmUmI  ;  how  inca[)ahlo  to  be  ([iicnched ;  how  cer- 
tain to  rise  on  a  morning  which  no  night  shouhl 
follow. 

Such  a  character  was  made  to  be  loved.  It  was 
loved.  Those  who  knew  and  saw  it  in  its  hour  oi' 
calm  —  those  who  could  repose  on  that  soft  green, 
loved  him.  His  plain  neighbors  loved  him;  and  one 
said,  when  he  was  laid  hi  his  grave,  "How  lonesome 
the  world  seems!"  Educated  young  men  loved  him. 
The  ministers  of  the  gospel,  the  general  intelligence 
of  the  country,  the  masses  afar  oft)  loved  him.  True, 
they  had  not  found  in  his  speeches,  read  by  millions, 
i^o  much  adulation  of  the  people;  so  much  of  the 
music  which  robs  the  public  reason  of  itself;  so  many 
l)h rases  of  humanity  and  philanthropy ;  and  some  had 
told  them  he  was  lofty  and  cold  —  solitary  in  his  great- 
ness ;  but  every  year  they  came  nearer  and  nearer  to 
him,  and  as  they  came  nearer  they  loved  him  better ; 
they  heard  how  tender  the  son  had  been,  the  husband, 
the  brother,  the  father,  the  friend,  and  neighbor;  that 
he  was  plain,  simple,  natural,  generous,  hospitable  — 
the  heart  larger  than  the  brain;  that  he  loved  little 
•children  and  reverenced  God,  the  Scriptures,  the  sab- 
bath day,  the  Constitution,  and  the  law  —  and  their 
hearts  clave  unto  him.  More  truly  of  him  than  even 
of  the  great  naval  darling  of  England  might  it  be 
said,  that  "his  presence  would  set  the  church  bells 
ringing,  and  give  school-boys  a  holiday  —  would  bring 


77 


ittle 


children  from  school  and  old  men  from  tlie  rhimnoy 
ronuT,  to  i^iv/.Q  on  him  ere  he  died."  The  great  and 
unavailing  hunentation  first  reveale<l  the  deep  plaec 
he  had  in  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen. 

You  are  now  to  add  to  this  his  extraordinary  power 
of  intlueneing  the  convictions  of  others  hy  speech,  and 
you  have  completed  the  survey  of  the  means  of  his 
greatness.  And  here  again  I  begin  hy  admiring  an 
aggregate,  made  up  of  excellences  and  triumphs, 
ordinarily  deemed  incompatible.  He  spoke  with  con- 
summate ability  to  the  bench,  and  yet  exactly  as, 
according  to  every  sound  canon  of  taste  and  ethics, 
the  bench  ought  to  be  addressed.  lie  spoke  with 
consummate  ability  to  the  jury,  and  yet  exactly  as, 
according  to  every  sound  canon,  that  totally  diflerent 
tribunal  ought  to  be  addressed.  In  the  halls  of  Con- 
gress, Ijefore  the  people  assembled  for  political  discus- 
sion in  masses,  before  audiences  smaller  and  nu)re 
select,  assembled  for  some  solemn  commemoration  of 
the  past,  or  of  the  dead ;  in  each  of  these,  again,  his 
speech,  of  the  first  form  of  ability,  was  exactly  adapted 
also  to  the  critical  proprieties  of  the  place ;  each 
achieved,  when  delivered,  the  most  instant  and  specific 
success  of  eloquence,  some  of  them  in  a  splendid  and 
remarkable  degree,  and  yet  stranger  still,  when  reduced 
to  writing  as  they  fell  from  his  lips,  they  compose  a 
body  of  reading,  in  many  volumes,  solid,  clear,  rich, 
and  full  of  harmony,  a  classical  and  permanent  political 
literature. 
And  yet  all  these  modes  of  his  eloquence,  exactly 

*7 


78 


.  '! 


(I  \. 


1 " 


h 
t 

f 


adapted  each  to  its  stage  and  its  end,  were  stamped 
with  his  image  and  superscription ;  identified  hy  charac- 
teristics incapable  to  be  comiterfeited,  and  impossible 
to  be  mistaken.  The  same  high  power  of  reason, 
intent  in  every  one  to  explore  and  display  some  truth; 
some  truth  of  judicial,  or  historical,  or  biographical 
fact;  some  trutli  of  law,  deduced  l)y  ccmstruction, 
perhaps,  or  by  illation :  some  truth  of  policy,  for  want 
whereof  a  nation,  generations,  may  be  the  worse; 
reason  seeking  and  unfolding  truth :  the  same  tone 
in  all  of  deep  earnestness,  expressive  of  strong  desire 
that  that  which  he  felt  to  be  important  should  bo 
accepted  as  true,  and  spring  up  to  action ;  the  same 
transparent,  plain,  forcible  and  direct  speech,  conveying 
his  exact  thought  tt)  the  mind,  not  something  less  or 
more  ;  the  same  sovereignty  of  form,  of  l)row,  and  eye, 
and  tone,  and  manner  —  every wiiere  the  intellectual 
king  of  men,  standing  before  you  —  that  same  marvel- 
lousness  of  qualities  and  results,  residing,  I  know  not 
where,  in  words,  in  pictures,  in  the  ordering  of  ideas, 
in  felicities  indescribable,  by  means  whereof,  coming 
from  his  timgue,  all  things  seemed  mended;  truth 
seemed  more  true;  pr()ba])ility  more  plausible;  great- 
ness more  grand  ;  goodness  more  awfid  ;  every  affection 
nvore  tender  than  when  coming  from  other  tongues, — 
these  are  in  all  his  eloquence.  But  sometimes  it  be- 
came individualized,  and  discriminated  even  from  itself; 
sometimes  place  and  circinnstances,  great  interests  at 
stake,  a  stage,  an  audience  fitted  for  the  highest  historic 
action,  a  crisis,  personal  or  national,  upon  him,  stirred 


79 


bc- 
solf; 
at 
loric 
Ted 


the  depths  of  that  emotional  nature  as  the  anger  of 
the  goddess  stirs  the  sea  on  Avhich  the  great  epic  is 
beginning ;  strong  passions,  tlieniselves  kindh'd  to  in- 
tensity, quickened  every  faculty  to  a  new  Hfe ;  the 
stimulated  associations  of  ideas  [)rouu;ht  all  treasures 
of  thought  and  knowledge  within  connnand,  the  f>pcll, 
which  often  held  his  imagination  fast,  dissolved,  and 
she  arose  and  gave  him  to  choose  of  her  urn  of  gold ; 
earnestness  became  vehemence,  tlie  simple,  perspicuous, 
measured  and  direct  language  became  a  headlong,  full 
and  burning  tide  of  speech ;  the  discourse  of  reason, 
wisdom,  gravity,  and  beauty,  changed  to  that  ./(uonfg, 
that  rarest  consunnnate  elo(pience,  grand,  ra})id,  pa- 
thetic, teii'ible;  the  allquid  i)Hmc)m(m  iujinilumtjue  that 
Cicero  might  have  recognized;  the  master  triumph  of 
man  in  the  rarest  opportunity  of  his  noblest  power. 

Such  elevation  .above  himself,  in  congressional  debate, 
was  most  uncommon.  Some  such  tliere  were  in  the 
great  discussions  of  executive  power  following  the  re- 
moval of  the  deposits,  which  they  who  heard  them  will 
never  forget,  and  some  which  rest  in  the  tradition  of 
hearers  only.  But  there  were  other  holds  of  oratory  on 
which,  under  the  inlluence  of  more  uncommon  s[)rings 
of  inspiration,  he  exempliPed,  in  still  other  forms,  an 
eloquence  in  which  I  do  not  know  that  he  has  had  a 
superior  among  men.  Addressing  masses  )>y  tens  of 
thousands  in  the  open  air,  on  the  urgent  political  (jues- 
tions  of  the  day;  or  designated  to  leatl  the  medltatiom' 
of  an  hour  devoted  to  the  remembrance  of  som<-  na- 
tional era,  or  of  some  incident  marking  the  progress  of 


80 

the  nation,  and  lifting  him  up  to  a  view  of  what  is  and 
wliat  is  past,  and  some  indistinct  revelation  of  the  glory 
that  lies  in  the  future,  or  of  some  great  historical  name, 
just  borne  by  the  nation  to  his  tomb  —  we  have  learned 
that  then  and  there,  at  the  base  of  Bunker  Hill,  before 
the  corner-stone-was  laid,  and  again  when  from  the  fin- 
ished column  the  centuries  looked  on  him;  in  Fanueil 
Ilall,  mourning  for  those  with  whose  spoken  or  written 
eloquence  of  freedom  its  arches  had  so  often  resounded ; 
on  the  rock  of  Plymouth ;  before  the  capitol,  of  which 
there  shall  not  l)e  one  stone  left  on  another,  before  his 
memory  shall  have  ceased  to  live  —  in  such  scenes,  un- 
fettered by  the  laws  of  forensic  or  parliamentary  de- 
bate, multitudes  uncounted  lifting  up  their  eyes  to  him; 
some  great  historical  scenes  of  America  around  —  all 
symbols  of  her  glory,  and  art,  and  power,  and  fortune, 
there  —  voices  of  the  past,  not  unheard  —  shapes  beck- 
oning from  the  future,  not  unseen  —  sometimes  that 
mighty  intellect,  borne  upwards  to  a  height  and  kindled 
to  an  illumination  which  we  shall  see  no  more,  wrought 
out,  as  it  were,  in  an  instant,  a  picture  of  vision,  warn- 
ing, prediction  ;  the  progress  of  the  nation  ;  the  con- 
trasts of  its  eras ;  the  heroic  deaths ;  the  motives  to 
patriotism  ;  the  maxims  and  arts  imperial  by  which  the 
glory  has  been  gathered  and  may  be  heightened  — 
wrought  out,  in  an  instant,  a  picture  to  fade  only  when 
all  record  of  our  mind  shall  die. 

In  looking  over  the  public  remains  of  his  oratory,  it 
is  striking  to  remark  how,  even  in  that  most  sober,  and 
massive  inderstanding  and  nature,  you  see  gathered  and 


81 


expressed  tlic  characteristic  sentiments  and  the  passing 
time  of  our  America.  It  is  the  strong  old  oak,  which 
ascends  hefcre  yon ;  yet  our  soil,  our  heaven,  are  attested 
in  it,  as  perfectly  as  if  it  were  a  flower  that  could  grow 
in  no  other  climate,  and  in  no  other  hour  of  the  year  or 
day.  Let  me  instance  in  one  thing  only.  It  is  a  pecu- 
liarity of  sonic  schools  of  eloquence,  that  they  embody 
and  utter,  not  merely  the  individual  genius  and  charac- 
ter of  the  speaker,  but  a  national  consciousness  ;  a  na- 
tional era ;  a  mood  ;  a  hope ;  a  dread ;  a  despair,  in 
which  you  listen  to  the  spoken  liL^tory  of  the  time. 
There  is  an  eloquence  of  an  expiring  nation ;  such  as 
seems  to  sadden  the  glorious  speech  of  Demosthenes; 
such  as  Ijreathes  sci'fii^d  and  ""loomv  from  the  visions  of 
the  prophets  of  the  last  days  of  Israel  and  Judah  ;  such 
as  gave  a  spell  to  the  expression  of  G rattan,  and  of 
Kossuth — the  sweetest,  most  mournful,  most  awful  of 
the  words  which  man  may  utter,  or  which  num  may 
hear,  the  eloquence  of  a  perishing  nation.  There  is 
another  eloquence,  in  which  the  national  consciousness 
of  a  young,  or  renewed  and  vast  strength;  of  tru.Nt  in 
a  dazzliiig,  certain,  and  limitless  fi'  are  ;  an  inward  glo- 
rying in  victories  yet  to  be  won,  ^'.urids  out,  as  by  voice 
of*  clarion,  challenging  to  contest  for  the  highest  prize 
of  earth — such  as  that  in  winch  the  leudcr  of  Israel  in 
its  first  days  holds  up  to  the  new  nation  the  land  of 
Promise ;  such  a.i  that  which  in  the  well  iuMigined 
speeciies  scattered  by  Livy,  over  the  history  of  the 
"  majestic  series  of  victories,"  speaks  the  lloman  con- 
sciousness of  growing  aggrandizement  which  should  sub- 


u^SU 


82 


jcct  tlic  world ;  such  as  that,  through  which,  at  the  tri- 
bunes of  her  revohition,  in  the  bulletins  of  her  rising 
Soldier,  France  told  to  the  world  her  dream  of  glory. 
And  of  this  kind,  somewhat,  is  ours  ;  cheerful ;  hopeful ; 
trusting,  as  befits  youth  and  spring ;  the  eloquence  of 
a  State  beginning  to  ascend  to  the  first  class  of  power, 
eminence,  and  consideration  5  and  conscious  of  itself  It 
is  to  no  purpose  that  they  tell  you  it  is  in  bad  taste  ; 
that  it  partakes  of  arrogance,  and  vanity ;  that  a  true 
national  goodbreeding  would  not  know,  or  seem  to 
know,  whether  the  nation  is  old  or  young;  whether  the 
tides  of  being  are  in  their  flow  or  ebb ;  whether  these 
coursers  of  the  sun  are  sinking,  slowly  to  rest,  wearied 
with  a  journey  of  a  thousand  years,  or  just  bounding 
from  the  Orient  unbrcathed.  Higher  laws  than  those  of 
taste  determine  the  consciousness  of  nations.  Higher  laws 
than  those  of  taste  determine  the  general  forms  of  the 
expression  of  that  consciousness.  Let  the  downward 
age  of  America  find  its  orators,  and  poets,  and  artists, 
to  erect  its  spirit ;  or  grace,  and  soothe  its  dying ;  be  it 
ours  to  go  up  with  Webster  to  the  rock  ;  the  monument ; 
the  c.apitol ;  and  Ijid  "  the  distant  generations  hail ! " 

In  this  connection  remark,  somewhat  more  generally, 
to  how  extraordinary  an  extent  he  had,  by  his  acts, 
words,  thoughts,  or  the  events  of  his  life,  associated  him- 
self forever,  in  the  memory  of  all  of  us,  with  every  his- 
torical incident,  or  at  least  with  every  historical  epoch; 
with  every  policy,  with  every  glorj',  with  every  great 
name  and  fundamental  institution,  and  grand  or  beauti- 
ful image,  which  are  peculiarly  and  properly  American. 


88 


tistfJ, 


Look  backwards  to  the  planting  of  Plyniouth,  and  James- 
town ;  to  the  various  scenes  of  colonial  life  in  peace  and 
war ;  to  the  opening  and  march,  and  close  of  the  revo- 
lutionary drama  —  to  the  age  of  the  Constitution  —  to 
Washington,  and  Franklin,  and  Adams,  and  Jellbrson  — 
to  the  whole  train  of  causes  from  the  lloforniation  down- 
wards, which  prepared  us  t'^  be  Kopublicans  —  to  that 
other  train  of  causes  which  led  us  to  be  Unionists;  look 
round  on  field,  orkshop,  and  deck,  and  hear  the  music 
of  labor  rewarded,  fed  and  protected  -  ■  look  on  the  bright 
sisterhood  of  the  States,  each  singiug  as  a  serai)h  in 
her  motion,  yet  blending  in  a  common  beam  and  swell- 
ing: a  common  harmonv  —  and  there  is  nothiii<j!;  whicli 
does  not  bring  him  by  some  tie  to  the  memoiy^  of 
America. 

We  seem  to  see  his  form  and  hoar  his  deep  grave 
speech  everywhere.  By  some  felicity  of  iiis  personal 
life ;  by  some  wise,  deep,  or  beautiful  word  spoken  or 
written;  by  some  service  of  his  own,  or  some  commem- 
oration of  the  services  of  others,  it  has  come  to  pass  that 
"  our  granite  hills,  our  inland  seas  and  prairies,  and  fresh, 
unbounded,  magnificent  wilderness  ;  "  our  encircling 
ocean;  the  resting-place  of  the  Pilgrims;  our  new-born 
sister  of  the  Pacific ;  our  popular  assemblies ;  our  free 
schools,  all  our  cherished  doctrines  of  education,  and  of 
the  influence  of  religion,  and  material  policy  and  law, 
and  the  Constitution,  give  us  back  his  name.  What 
American  landscape  will  you  look  on  —  what  subject  of 
American  interest  will  you  study  —  what  source  of  hope 


84 


'  ■ 


I    I 
i 


or  of  anxiety,  as  an  American,  will  you  acknowledge, 
that  it  does  not  recall  him  ? 

1  have  reserved,  until  I  could  treat  it  as  a  separate  and 
final  topic,  the  consideration  of  the  morality  of  Mr.  Web- 
ster's public  character  and  life.  To  his  true  fame,  to 
the  kind  and  degree  of  inlluence  which  that  large  series 
of  great  actions,  and  those  embodied  thoughts  of  great 
intellect  are  to  exert  on  the  future  —  this  is  the  all- 
important  consideration.  In  the  last  speech  which  he 
made  in  the  Senate  —  the  last  of  those  which  he  made, 
as  he  said,  for  the  Constitution  and  the  Union,  and  which 
he  might  have  conunended,  as  Bacon  his  name  and 
memory,  "  to  men's  charitable  r  poeches,  to  foreign  na- 
tions, and  the  next  ages,"  yet  witli  a  bettor  hope,  h(;  as- 
serted—  "  The  ends  I.  aim  at  shall  Ijo  those  of  my  coun- 
try, my  God,  and  truth."     Is  that  |)raise  his  ? 

Until  the  seventh  day  of  Mtu-ch,  IS-jO,  I  think  it  would 
have  been  accorded  to  him  by  an  almost  universal 
acclaim,  as  general,  and  as  expressive  of  profound  and 
intelligent  conviction,  and  of  enthusiasm,  love,  and 
trust,  as  ever  saluted  conspicuous  statesnumship,  tried 
by  many  crises  of  afliiirs  in  a  great  nation,  agitated 
ever  by  parties,  and  wholly  free. 

That  he  had  admitted  into  his  heart  a  desire  to  win, 
by  deserving  them,  the  highest  forms  of  public  honor, 
many  woidd  have  said  ;  and  they  who  loved  him  most 
fondly,  an'l  felt  il'C  truest  solicitude  that  he  should  carry 
a  good  conscience  and  r  ire  fame  brightening  to  the 
end,  would  not  have  fei.red  to  concede.     For  he  was  not 


85 


win, 
jiior, 
most 
•tirry 
the 
not 


ignorant  of  himself,  and  he  therefore  knew  that  there 
was  nothing  within  the  Union,  Constitution  and  hiw,  too 
high,  or  too  large,  or  too  difficult  for  him.  He  believed 
that  his  natural  or  his  acquired  abilities,  and  his  policy 
of  administration,  would  contribute  to  the  true  glory  of 
America  ;  and  he  held  no  theory  of  ethics  which  re- 
quired him  to  disparage,  to  suppress,  to  ignore  vast  ca- 
pacities of  public  service  merely  because  they  were  his 
own.  If  the  fleets  of  Greece  were  assembling,  and  her 
tribes  buckling  on  their  arms  from  Laconia  to  Mount 
Olympus,  from  the  promontory  of  Sunium  to  the  isle  far- 
thest  to  the  west,  and  the  great  epic  action  was  opening,  it 
was  not  for  him  to  fain  insanity  or  idiocy,  to  escape  the  per- 
ils and  the  honor  of  command.  But  that  all  this  in  him 
had  been  ever  in  subordination  to  a  principled  and  beau- 
tiful public  virtue ;  that  every  sectional  bias,  every  party 
tie,  as  well  as  every  personal  aspiring,  had  been  uniform- 
ly heh'  jy  him  for  nothing  against  the  claims  of  coun- 
try; that  nothing  lower  i,iian  country  seemed  worthy 
enough  —  nothing  smaller  than  country  large  enough  — 
for  that  great  heart,  would  not  have  been  questioned  by 
a  whisper.  Ah !  if  at  any  hour  before  that  day  he  had 
died,  how  would  then  the  great  procession  of  the  people 
of  America  —  the  great  triumphal  procession  of  the 
dead  —  have  moved  onward  to  his  grave  —  the  sublim- 
ity of  national  sorrow,  not  contrasted,  not  outraged  by 
one  feeble  voice  of  calumny ! 

In  that  antecedent  public  life,  embracing  from  1812 
to   1850  —  a   period   of   thirty-eight    years  —  I    find 

grandest  proofs  of   the   genuineness   and   comprehen- 

8 


86 

•sivcnoss  of  hin  patriotism,  and  the  .l)oklncs8  and  man- 
linens  of  his  pu1)lic  virtue.  He  began  his  career  of 
politics  as  a  federalist.  Such  was  his  father  —  so  bo- 
loved  and  revered  ;  .such  his  literary  and  professional 
companions;  such,  although  by  no  very  decisive  or 
certain  preponderance,  the  community  in  which  he 
was  bred  and  was  to  live.  Under  that  name  of  party 
he  entered  Congress,  personally,  and  by  connection, 
opposed  to  the  war,  which  was  thought  to  bear  with 
such  extreme  sectional  severity  upon  the  North  and 
East.  And  yet,  one  might  almost  say  that  the  only 
thing  he  imbibed  from  federalists  or  federalism,  was 
love  and  admiration  for  the  Constitution  as  the  means 
of  union.  That  passion  he  did  inherit  from  them ; 
that  he  cherished. 

He  came  into  Congress,  opposed,  as  I  have  said,  to 
the  war;  and  behold  him,  if  you  would  judge  of  the 
f[uality  of  hi.s  political  ethics,  in  opposition.  Did  those 
eloquent  lips,  at  a  time  of  life  when  vehemence  and 
imprudence  are  expected,  if  ever,  and  not  ungraceful, 
let  fall  ever  one  word  of  faction?  Did  he  ever  deny 
one  power  to  the  general  government,  which  the 
soundest  expositors  of  all  creeds  J\ave  allowed  it  ?  Did 
he  ever  breathe  a  syllable  which  could  excite  a  region, 
a  State,  a  family  of  States,  against  the  Union  —  which 
could  hold  out  hope  or  aid  to  the  enemy  ?  —  which 
sought  or  tended  to  turn  back  cr  to  chill  the  fiery 
tide  of  a  new  and  intense  nationality,  then  bursting 
up,  to  flow  and  burn  till  all  things  appointed  to  America 
to  do  shall  be  fulfilled  ?    These  questions  in  their  sub- 


II' 


87 


stance,  he  put  to  Mr.  Calhoun,  in  1838,  in  the  Senate, 
and  tliiit  grout  man  —  one  of  the  authors  of  the  war  — 
just  then,  only  then,  in  relations  unfriendly  to  Mr. 
Wuhstor,  and  who  had  just  insinuated  a  reproach  on 
his  conduct  in  the  war,  was  silent.  Did  Mr.  Wehster 
content  himself  even  with  ohjecting  to  the  details  of 
the  mode  in  which  the  administration  wa<^ed  the  war? 
No,  indeed.  Taught  by  his  coniititutional  studies  that 
the  Union  was  made  in  })art  for  couuuerce,  familiar 
witli  the  habits  of  our  long  line  of  coast,  knowing 
well  how  many  sailors  and  fishermen,  driven  from 
every  sea  by  embargo  and  war,  ])urned  to  go  to  the 
gun-deck  and  avenge  the  long  wrongs  of  Kngland  on 
the  element  where  she  had  inllicted  them,  his  opposi 
tion  to  the  war  manifested  itself  by  teaching  the  nation 
that  the  deck  was  her  held  of  fame.  JVon  illi  iiiipcrlinii 
jxjlayi  sacvinn  que  /rkhnlum,  sctl  nobis,  mvte  (hdum. 

But  I  might  recall  other  evidence  of  the  sterling 
and  unusual  qualiti'^.:  of  his  public  virtue.  Look  in 
liow  manly  a  sort  he,  not  merely  conducted  a  particular 
argument  or  a  particular  speech,  but  in  how  manly 
a  sort,  in  how  high  a  moral  tone,  he  imiforndy  dealt 
with  the  mind  of  his  country.  Politicians  got  an  advan- 
tage of  him  for  this  while  he  lived  ;  let  the  dead  have  just 
praise  to-day.  Our  public  life  is  one  long  electioneer- 
ing, and  even  Burke  tells  you  that  at  popular  elections 
the  most  rigorous  casuists  will  remit  something  of 
their  severity.  But  where  do  you  find  him  flattering 
his  countrymen,  indirectly  or  directly,  for  a  vote  ?  On 
what  did  he  ever  place  himself  but  good  counsels  and 


li 


88 

useful  servico?  Tlis  arts  were  luanlj  arts,  and  he  never 
s'uv  a  (lay  of  temptation  when  he  would  not  rather 
full  than  stand  on  any  other.  Who  ever  heard  tfiat 
voice  cheering  the  people  on  to  rapacitx^  t<»  injustice, 
to  n  vain  and  guilty  glory  ?  Who  ever  saw  that  pencil 
of  light  hold  np  a  pictinv  of  manifest  di.vstiny  to  da/zlc 
the  fancy?  How  anxiously  rather,  in  season  and  out, 
by  tlio  energetic  elo(|uence  of  his  youth,  by  his  counsels 
bocpieathed  on  11m'  verge  of  a  timely  grave,  he  preferred 
to  teach  that  by  all  possible  acquired  sobriety  of  mind, 
by  asking  reverently  of  the  past,  by  obedience  to  the 
law,  by  habits  of  paiient  an('  legitimate  la1)or,  by  the 
cultivation  of  the  mind,  by  tiiv»  fear  and  worship  of  God, 
we  educate  ourselves  for  the  future  that  is  revealing. 
Men  Slid  he  did  not  sym^.ithize  with  the  masses, 
because  his  phraseology  wi.s  rather  of  an  old  and 
sin  l)le  srhool,  rejecting  the  nauseous  and  vain  repeti- 
tions of  humanity  and  ihilanthropy,  and  progress  and 
brothvriiood,  in  which  may  lurk  heresies  so  dreadful, 
of  i^or  lalism  or  disunion ;  in  which  a  selfish,  hollow,  and 
shadow  !nul)ition  may  mask  itself — the  syren  song 
whif'h  would  lure  the  pilot  from  his  course.  But  I 
say  that  he  did  sympathize  with  them ;  and,  because 
he  did,  ho  came  to  them  not  with  adulation,  but  with 
truth ;  not  with  words  to  please,  but  with  measures  to 
serve  them  ;  lot  that  his  populai  sympathies  wore  less, 
but  that  his  personrd  and  intellectual  dignity  and  his 
public  morality  were  greater. 

And  on  the  seventh  day  of  March,  and  down  to  the 
final  scene,  might  he  not  still  say  as  ever  before,  that 


80 


ess, 
his 

the 
hat 


"all  the  ends  ho  aimed  at  "Nvere  liis  country's,  his  Clod's, 
and  truth's."  He  declared,  "I  npeak  to-day  for  the 
preservation  of  the  Union.  Hear  nie  for  my  cause. 
I  speak  to-day  out  of  a  solicitous  and  anxious  heart 
for  the  restoration  to  the  country  of  that  quiet  and 
harmony,  ^vhich  make  the   blessings  of  this   Union  so 

m 

rich  and  so  dear  to  us  all.  These  arc  the  motives  and 
the  sole  motives  that  influence  me."  If  in  that  decla- 
ration he  was  sincere,  was  he  not  bound  in  conscience 
to  give  the  counsels  -  ihat  day?  What  were  they? 
What  was  the  single  i  for  which  his  political  morality 
was  called  in  questioi  Only  that  a  provision  of  Jic 
Federal  Constitution,  ordaiuinjjc  the  restituticm  of  luj^i- 
tivc  slaves,  shoidd  be  executed  according  to  its  true 
meaning.  This  only.  And  might  he  not  in  good  con- 
science keep  the  Constitution  in  this  part,  and  in  all, 
for  the  preservation  of  the  Union  ? 

Under  his  oath  to  support  it,  and  to  support  it  all, 
and  with  his  opinions  of  that  duty  so  long  held,  pro- 
claimed iniiformly,  in  whose  vindication  on  some  great 
days,  he  had  found  the  chief  opportunity  of  his  per- 
sonal glory,  might  he  not,  in  good  conscience  support 
it,  and  all  of  it,  even  if  he  could  not,  and  no  human 
intelligence  could,  certainly,  know,  that  the  extreme 
evil  would  follow,  in  immediate  consequence,  its  viola- 
tion? Was  it  so  recent  a  doctrine  of  his  that  the 
Constitution  was  obligatory  upon  the  national  and  in- 
dividual conscience,  that  you  should  ascribe  it  to  sudden 
and  irresistible  temptation  ?     Why,  what  had  he,  quite 

down  to  the  seventh  of  March,  that  more  truly  indi- 

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vitliializetl  him  —  what  had  he  more  characteristically 
his  own  —  wherewithal  had  he  to  glory  more  or  other 
than  all  beside,  than  this  very  doctrine  of  the  sacred 
and  permanent  obligation  to  support  each  and  all 
parts  of  that  great  compact  of  union  and  justice? 
Had  not  this  been  his  distinction,  his  sjjccialit/j  — 
almost  the  foible  of  his  greatness — the  darling  and  mas- 
ter passion  ever  ?  Consider  that  that  was  a  sentiment 
which  had  been  \)^Yi  of  his  conscious  nature  for  more 
than  sixty  years;  that  from  the  time  he  bought  his 
first  copy  of  the  Constitution  on  the  handkerchief,  and 
revered  parental  lips  had  commended  it  to  him,  with 
all  other  holy  and  beautiful  things,  along  with  lessons 
of  reverence  to  God,  and  the  belief  and  love  of  His 
Scriptures,  along  with  the  doctrine  of  the  catechism, 
the  unequalled  music  of  Watts,  the  name  of  Washing- 
ton —  there  had  never  been  an  hour  that  he  had  not 
held  it  the  master  work  of  man — just  in  its  ethics, 
consummate  in  its  practical  wisdom,  paramount  in  its 
injunctions;  that  every  year  of  life  had  deepened  the 
original  impression :  that  as  his  mind  opened,  and  his 
associations  widened,  he  found  that  every  one  for  whom 
he  felt  respect,  instructors,  theological  and  moral  teach- 
ers, his  entire  party  connection,  the  opposite  party, 
and  the  whole  country,  so  held  it,  too;  that  its  fruits 
of  more  than  half  a  century  of  union,  of  happiness, 
of  renown,  bore  constant  and  clear  witness  to  it  in 
his  mind,  and  that  it  chanced  that  certain  emergent 
and  rare  occasions  had  devolved  on  him  to  stand  forth 
to  maintain  it,  to  vindicate  its  interpretation,  to  vindi- 


91 


.■'i. 


cate  its   authority,  to  unfold   its  workings  and   uses; 
that  he  had  so  acquitted  himself  of  that  opjDortunity 
as  to  have  won  the  title  of  its  Expounder  and  Defender, 
so  that  his  proudest  memories,  his  most  prized  renown, 
referred  to  it,  and  were  entwined  with   it  — and  say 
whether  with  such  antecedents,  readiness  to  execute, 
or  disposition  to  evade,  would  have  been  the  hardest 
to  explain ;  likeliest  to  suggest  the  surmise  of  a  new 
temptation  !     He  who  laiows  any  thing  of  man,  knows 
that  his  vote  for  beginning  the  restoration  of  harmony 
by   keeping   the  whole  Constitution,  was   determined, 
was  necessitated  by  the   great  law  of  sequences  — a 
great  law   of  cause   and   effect,   running  back   to  his 
mother's  arms,  as  resistless  as  the  law  which  moves  the 
system  about  the  sun  —  and  that  he  must  have  given 
it,  although  it  had  been  opened  to  him  in  vision,  that 
within  the  next  natural  day  his  "  eyes  should  be  turned 
to  behold  for  the  last  time  the  sun  in  heaven." 

To  accuse  him  in  that  act  of  «  sinning  against  his  own 
conscience,"  is  to  charge,  one  of  these  things;  either 
that  no  well  instructed  conscience  can  approve  and 
maintain  the  Constitution,  and  each  of  its  parts ;  and  there- 
fore that  his,  by  inference,  did  not  approve  it ;  or  that 
he  had  never  employed  the  proper  means  of  instructing 
his  conscience;  and  therefore  its  approval,  if  it  were 
given,  was  itself  an  immorality.  The  accuser  must  as- 
sert one  of  these  propositions.  He  will  not  deny,  I  take 
it  for  granted,  that  the  conscience  requires  to  be  in- 
structed by  pohtical  teaching,  in  order  to  guide  the  citi- 
zen, or  the  public  man  aright,  in  the  matter  of  political 


$ 


•i>n 


92 


duties.  Will  he  say  that  the  moral  sentiments  alone, 
whatever  their  origin ;  whether  factitious  and  deriva- 
tive, or  parcel  of  the  spirit  of  the  child  ajid  born  with 
it ;  that  they  alone,  by  force  of  strict  and  mere  ethical 
training,  become  qualified  to  pronounce  authoritatively 
whether  the  Constitution,  or  any  other  vast,  and  com- 
plex civil  policy,  as  a  whole,  whereby  a  nation  is  crea- 
ted, and  preserved,  ought  to  have  been  made,  or  ought 
to  be  executed?  Will  he  venture  to  tell  you  that  if 
your  conscience  approves  the  Union,  the  Constitution  in 
all  its  parts,  and  the  law  which  administers  it,  that  you 
are  bound  to  obey  and  uphold  them;  and  if  it  disap- 
proves, you  must,  according  to  your  measure,  and  in 
your  circles  of  agitation,  disobey  and  subvert  them,  and 
leave  the  matter  there  —  forgetting  or  designedly  omit- 
ting to  tell  you  also  that  you  are  bound,  in  all  good 
faith  and  diligence  to  resort  to  studies  and  to  teachers 
ah  extra  —  in  order  to  determine  whether  the  conscience 
ought  to  approve  or  disapprove  the  Union,  the  Constitu- 
tion and  the  law,  in  view  of  the  whole  aggregat  eof  their 
nature  and  fruits?  Does  he  not  perfectly  know  that 
this  moral  faculty,  however  trained,  by  mere  moral 
institution,  specifically  directed  to  that  end,  to  be 
tender,  sensitive,  and  peremptory,  is  totally  unequal  to 
decide  on  any  action,  or  any  thir  at  the  very  sim- 
plest ;  that  which  produces  the  mv^bo  palpable  and  im- 
mediate result  of  unmixed  good,  oi  unmixed  evil ;  and 
that  when  it  comes  to  judge  on  the  great  mixed  cases  of 
the  world,  where  the  consequences  are  numerous,  their 
development  slow  and  successive,  the  light  and  shadow 


93 


of  a  blended  and  multiform  good  and  evil  spread  out  on 
the  lifetime  of  a  nation,  that  then  morality  must  bor- 
row from  history ;  from  politics ;  from  reason  operating 
oh  history  and  politics;  her  elements  of  determination? 
I  think  he  must  agree  to  this.  He  must  agree,  I  think, 
that  to  single  out  one  provision  in  a  political  system  of 
many  parts  and  of  elaborate  interdependence,  to  take  it 
all  alone,  exactly  as  it  stands,  and  without  attention  to 
its  origin  and  history ;  the  necessities,  morally  resistless, 
which  prescribed  its  introduction  into  the  system,  the 
unmeasured  good  in  other  forms  which  its  allowance 
buys,  the  unmeasured  evil  in  other  forms  which  its  allow- 
ance hinders  —  without  attention  to  these,  to  present  it  in 
all  "  the  nakedness  of  a  metapli}' sical  abstraction  "  to 
the  mere  sensibilities ;  and  ask  if  it  is  not  inhuman,  and 
if  they  answer  according  to  their  kind,  that  it  is,  then 
to  say  that  the  problem  is  solved,  and  the  right  of  dis- 
obedience is  made  clear  —  he  must  agree  that  this  is 
not  to  exalt  re?  son  and  conscience,  but  to  outrage  both. 
He  must  agree  that  although  the  supremacy  of  con- 
science is  absolute  whether  the  decision  be  right  or 
wrong,  that  is,  according  to  ihc  real  qualities  of  thiuf/s  or  not, 
that  there  lies  back  of  the  actual  conscience,  and  its 
actual  decisions,  the  great  anterior  duty  of  having  a 
conscience  that  shall  decide  according  to  the  real  qualities  of 
things;  that  to  this  vast  attainment  some  adequate 
knowledge  of  the  real  qualities  of  the  things  which  are 
to  be  subjected  to  its  inspection  is  indispensable ;  that  if 
the  matter  to  be  judged  of  is  any  thing  so  large,  com- 
plex, and  conventional  as  the  duty  of  the  citizen,  or  the 


H 


(] 


i  I 


[I    ^ 


public  man,  to  the  State  ;  the  duty  of  preserving  or  de- 
stroying the  order  of  things  in  which  we  are  born ;  the 
duty  of  executing  or  violating  one  of  the  provisions  of 
organic  hiw  which  the  country,  having  a  wide  and  clear 
view  before  and  after,  had  deemed  a  needful  instrumen- 
tal means  for  the  preservation  of  that  order ;  that  then 
it  is  not  enough  to  relegate  the  citizen,  or  the  public 
man,  to  a  higher  law,  and  an  interior  illumination,  and 
leave  him  there.  Such  discourse  is  "  as  the  stars,  which 
give  so  little  light  because  they  are  so  high."  He  must 
agree  that  in  such  case,  morality  itself  should  go  to 
school.  There  must  be  science  as  well  as  conscience,  as 
old  Fuller  has  said.  She  must  herself  learn  of  history  ; 
she  must  learn  of  politics;  she  must  consult  the  build- 
ers of  the  State,  the  living  and  the  dead,  to  know  its 
value,  its  aspects  in  the  long  run,  on  happiness  and 
morals ;  its  dangers ;  the  means  of  its  preservation ;  the 
maxims  and  arts  imperial  of  its  glory.  To  fit  her  to  be 
the  mistress  of  civil  life,  he  will  agree,  that  she  must 
come  out  for  a  space  from  the  interior  round  of  emo- 
tions, and  subjective  states  and  contemplations,  and  in- 
trospection, "  cloistered,  unexercised,  unbreathed  "  — 
and,  carrying  with  her  nothing  but  her  tenderness,  her 
scrupulosity,  and  her  love  of  truth,  survey  the  object- 
ive realities  of  the  State  ;  ponder  thoughtfully  on  the 
complications,  and  impediments,  and  antagonisms  which 
make  the  noljlest  politics  but  an  aspiring,  an  approxima- 
tion, a  compromise,  a  type,  a  shadow  of  good  to  come, 
"  the  buying  of  great  blessings  at  great  prices  "  —  and 


95 


there  learn  civil  duty  sccnmlum  suhjectam  maliriam.   '-'Add 
to  your  virtue  knowledge"  —  or  it  is  no  virtue. 

And  now,  is  he  who  accuses  Mr.  Webster  of  "  sinning 
against  his  own  conscience,"  quite  sure  that  he  hioivs, 
that  that  conscience,  —  well  instructed  by  profoundest 
political  studies,  and  thoughts  of  the  reason ;  well 
instructed  by  an  appropriate  moral  institution  sedu- 
lously applied,  did  not  commend  and  approve  his 
conduct  to  himself?  Does  he  know,  that  he  had  not 
anxiously,  and  maturely  studied  the  ethics  of  the  Con- 
stitution ;  and  as  a  qucsUon  of  cihics,  but  of  ethics 
applied  to  a  stupendous  problem  of  practical  life,  and 
had  not  become  satisfied  that  they  were  right  ?  Does 
he  know  that  he  had  not  done  this,  when  his  fiiculties 
were  all  at  their  best ;  and  his  motives  under  no  suspi- 
cion? May  not  such  an  inquirer,  for  aught  you  can 
know ;  may  not  that  great  mind  have  verily  and 
conscientiously  thought  that  he  had  learned  in  that 
investigation  many  things  ?  May  he  not  have  thought 
that  he  learned,  that  the  duty  of  the  inhabitants  of 
the  free  States,  in  that  day's  extremity,  to  the  republic, 
the  duty  at  all  events  of  statesmen,  to  the  reiDublic,  is 
a  little  too  large,  and  delicate,  and  difficult,  to  be  all  com- 
prehended in  the  single  emotion  of  compassion  for  one 
class  of  persons  in  the  commonwealth,  or  in  carrying  out 
the  single  principle  of  abstract,  and  natural,  and  violent 
justice  to  one  class  ?  May  he  not  have  thought  that  he 
found  there  some  stupendous  exemplifications  of  what  we 
read  of,  in  books  of  casuistry,  the  "dialectics  of  con- 
science,"  as   conflicts   of   duties;    such    things   as   the 


06 


i   I 


I  i 


[^ 


conflicts  of  the  greater  with  the  less;  conflicts  of  the 
attainable  with  the  visionary ;  conflicts  of  the  real  with 
the  seeming;  and  may  he  not  have  been  soothed  to 
learn  that  the  evil  which  he  found  in  this  part  of  the 
Constitution  was  the  least  of  two ;  was  unavoidable ; 
was  compensated  ;  was  justified;  was  commanded,  as  by 
a  voice  from  the  mount,  by  a  more  exceeding  and 
enduring  good?  May  he  not  have  thought  that  he 
had  learned,  that  the  grandest,  most  difficult,  most 
pleasing  to  God,  of  the  achievements  of  secular  wisdom 
and  philanthropy,  is  the  building  of  a  state;  that  of 
the  first  class  of  grandeur  and  difficulty,  and  acceptable- 
ness  to  Ilim,  in  this  kind,  was  the  building  of  our  own : 
that  unless  everybody  of  consequence  enough  to  be 
heard  of  in  the  age  and  generation  of  Washington  — 
imless  that  whole  age  and  generation  were  in  a  con- 
spiracy to  cheat  themselves,  and  history,  and  posterity, 
a  certain  policy  of  concession  and  forbearance  of  region 
to  region,  was  indispensable  to  rear  that  master  work 
of  man ;  and  that  that  same  policy  of  concession  and  for- 
bearance is  as  indispensable,  more  so,  now,  to  afford 
a  rational  ground  of  hope  for  its  preservation  ?  May 
he  not  have  thought  that  he  had  learned  that  the 
obligation,  if  such  in  any  sense  you  may  call  it,  of  one 
State  to  allow  itself  to  become  an  asylum  for  those  fly- 
ing from  slavery  in  another  State,  was  an  obligation  of 
benevolence,  of  humanity  only,  not  of  justice ;  that  it 
must,  therefore,  on  ethical  principles,  be  exercised  under 
all  the  limitations  which  regulate  and  condition  the 
benevolence  of  States ;  that  therefore  each  is  to  exer- 


I 


97 

CISC  it  in  strict  subordination  to  its  own  interests,  esti- 
mated by  a  wise  statesnmnsbip,  and  a  well  instructed 
public  conscience  ;  that  benevolence  itself,  even  its 
ministrations  of  mere  good-will,  is  an  affair  of  measure 
and  of  proportions ;  and  must  choose  sometimes  be- 
tween the  greater  good,  and  the  less ;  that  if,  to  the 
highest  degree,  and  widest  diffusion  of  human  happiness, 
a  Union  of  States  such  as  ours,  some  free,  some  not  so, 
was  necessary ;  and  to  such  Union  the  Constitution  was 
necessary ;  and  to  such  a  Constitution  this  clau.se  was 
necessary,  humanity  itself  prescribes  it,  and  presides  in 
it  ?  May  he  not  have  thought  that  he  learned  that 
there  are  proposed  to  humanity  in  this  world  many 
fields  of  beneficent  exertion ;  some  larger,  some  smaller, 
some  more,  some  less  expensive  and  profitable  to  till ; 
that  among  these  it  is  always  lawful,  and  often  indispen- 
sable to  make  a  choice  ;  that  sometimes,  to  acquire  the- 
right,  or  the  ability  to  labor  in  one,  it  is  needful  to 
covenant,  not  to  invade  another;  and  that  such  cove- 
nant, in  partial  restraint,  rather  in  reasonable  direction 
of  philanthrophy,  is  good  in  the  forum  of  conscience ; 
and  setting  out  with  these  very  element"  cy  maxims  of 
practical  morals,  may  he  not  have  thou  iht  that  he 
learned  from  the  careful  study  of  the  facts  of  our  his- 
tory, and  opinions,  that  to  acquire  the  power  of  advanc- 
ing the  dearest  interests  of  man,  through  generations 
countless,  by  that  unequalled  security  of  peace  and  pro- 
gress, the  Union ;  the  power  of  advancing  the  interest  of 
each  State,  each  region,  each  relation — the  slave  and  the 
master;  the  power  of  subjecting  a  wdiole  continent  all 

9 


I 


98 


i  , 


f-  ' 


1"^ 

I  . 


m    II 


nstir,  and  on  fire  ■with  the  emulation  of  young  repub- 
lics; of  Huhjecting  it,  through  ages  of  household  calm, 
to  the  sweet  influences  of  Christianity,  of  culture,  of 
the  great,  gentle,  and  sure  reformer,  time,  that  to  cnal)le 
us  to  do  this,  to  enable  us  to  grasp  this  boundless  and 
over-renewing  harvest  of  philanthropy,  it  would  have 
been  a  good  bargain  —  that  humanity  herself  Avould 
have  approved  it  —  to  have  bound  ourselves  never  so 
much  as  to  look  across  the  line  into  the  inclosure  of 
Southern  municipal  slavery ;  certainly  never  to  enter 
it ;  still  less,  still  less  to 


"  Pluck  its  berries  liarsh  and  crude, 
And  with  forced  fingers  rude 
Shatter  its  leaves  before  the  mellowing  year." 


Until  the  accuser  -who  charges  him,  now  that  he  is  in 
his  grave,  with  "having  sinned  against  his  conscience," 
will  assert  that  the  conscience  of  a  public  man  may  not, 
must  not,  be  instructed  by  profound  knowledge  of  the 
vast  subject-matter  with  which  public  life  is  conversant 
—  even  as  the  conscience  of  the  mariner  may  be  and 
must  be  instructed  by  the  knowledge  of  navigation ; 
and  that  of  the  pilot  by  the  knowledge  of  the  depths  and 
shallows  of  the  coast ;  and  that  of  the  engineer  of  the 
boat  and  the  train,  by  the  knowledge  of  the  capacities 
of  his  mechanism,  to  achieve  a  proposed  velocity ;  and 
will  assert  that  he  is  certain  that  the  consummate  science 
of  our  great  statesman,  teas  felt  hy  himself  to  prescribe  to  his 
morality  another  conduct  than  that  which  he  adopted, 
and  that  he  thus  consciously  outraged  that  "sense  of 


! 


09 

duty  which  pursues  us  ever" — is  he  not  inexcusjibk*, 
"whoever  he  is,  that  so  ju(l<^es  another? 

IJut  it  is  time  that  this  eulogy  was  spoken.  My  heart 
goes  back  into  the  cothn  there  with  him,  and  I  would 
pause.  I  went — it  is  a  day  or  two  since  —  alone,  to 
see  again  the  home  which  he  so  dearly  love<l,  the  cham- 
ber where  he  died,  the  grave  in  which  they  laid  him  — 
all  habited  as  when 

"  His  look  drew  andionce  still  as  iiiy;1it, 
Or  simuiior's  noontide  air, 

till  the  heavens  be  no  more.  Throughout  that  spacious 
and  cdlm  scene  all  things  to  the  eye  showed  at  first 
iriichanged.  The  books  in  the  library,  the  portraits, 
the  table  at  which  he  wrote,  the  scientific  culture  of 
the  land,  the  course  of  agricultural  occupation,  the 
coming  in  of  harvests,  fruit  of  the  seed  his  own  hand 
had  scattered,  the  animals  and  implements  of  husband- 
ry, the  trees  planted  by  him  in  lines,  in  copses,  in 
orchards,  by  thousands,  the  seat  under  the  noble  elm 
on  which  he  used  to  sit  to  feel  the  southwest  wind  at 
evening,  or  hear  the  breathings  of  the  sea,  or  the  not 
less  audible  music  of  the  starry  heavens,  all  seemed 
at  first  unchanged.  The  sun  of  a  bright  day,  from 
which,  however,  something  of  the  fervors  of  mid- 
summer were  wanting,  fell  temperately  on  them  all, 
filled  the  air  on  all  sides  with  the  utterances  of  life, 
and  gleamed  on  the  long  line  of  ocean.  Some  of  those 
whom  on  earth  he  loved  best,  still  were  there.  The 
great  mind  still  seemed  to  preside ;  the  great  presence 


100 


I- 


to  ho  with  you  ;  you  might  expect  to  hear  ngain  the 
rich  and  phiyful  tones  of  the  voice  of  tli(i  old  hospi- 
tality. Yet  a  moment  more,  and  all  the  scene  took  on 
the  aspect  of  one  great  monument,  inscribed  with  his 
name,  and  sacred  to  his  memory.  And  such  it  shall  he 
in  all  the  future  of  America !  The  sensation  of  deso- 
latcncss,  and  loneliness,  and  darkness,  with  which  you 
see  it  now,  will  pass  away ;  the  sharp  grief  of  love  and 
friendship  will  l)ecome  soothed  ;  men  will  repair  thither 
as  they  are  wont  to  commemorate  the  great  days  of 
history ;  the  same  glance  shall  take  in,  and  the  same 
emotions  shall  greet  and  Idess  the  Harbor  of  the 
Pilgrims,  and  the  Tomb  of  Webster. 


'    ' 


I.  '^ 


sill 

Si,'  • 


i 


•»         ,-/ 


,,.J 


